By Mr. Andre De Koker, STEM teacher 

During Advisory, different individuals—each carrying their own feelings, fears, realities, and unique character—come together as one. This is often where the real challenge lies, because true connection requires trust, psychological safety, and the freedom to be our authentic selves without judgment. 

To visualize this concept through a hands-on activity, our advisory built stacked towers using blocks of distinct shapes and colors. Following a set pattern, students initially struggled to stack, align, and build with these mismatched pieces—much like how it feels when we are thrust into a new collaborative environment, whether in Advisory or in life itself. 

Yet, stack we did. By interlocking these diverse shapes and colors, one block at a time, we constructed a new entity with a far stronger design. 

So, it should be with each of us: bringing our uniqueness, character, fears, joys, and life experiences to the table, and learning how to stack them together to create something new, powerful, and visionary that can impact the world. As 1 Corinthians 12:12 reminds us, "Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ." Advisory is the space where we learn to bring our many parts together to become one body.