The Family: An Interview with the Original Advisory Powerhouse
“We didn’t set the bar, we WERE the bar.”
Back when Comp Sci High first started, when gender-split advisories were a thing, there were these two advisors who we all know today as Mr. Mosley and Ms. Mao who worked together to make one of the strongest CSH advisories in CSH history: The Family.
Before that, let's go back and see why they were such a strong advisory. I went to the two advisors themselves and interviewed them. As I interviewed them, they were recalling many of the nicest memories of their time with their old advisory.
So we all know that if you were to hear the sentence “Mr. Mosley and Ms. Mao were advisors together,” you’d question how that dynamic would ever possibly work, but let me tell you now, it worked perfectly.
Mr. Mosley: “Having us together was definitely an experiment, and Mr.Noah was probably thinking let me see how this goes when first making it happen. But it worked out well because we definitely had a good balance, because our first year together was like our norming and storming year where we were really figuring out how to balance each other, and then when we came into 10th grade it was like we knew what the deal was.”
Prior to them fully combining as an advisory in 11th and 12th grade, they would be entirely gender-split 9th grade year and then mainly together but split on certain occasions in 10th grade year.
I asked them how their 11th and 12th grade year was as advisors since those 2 years they were already locked in on what needed to be done and were always together rather than split.
Mr. Mosley: “What led to us getting on track was 10th grade year, like getting more on the same page and it also helped that after that summer of working experience the students come back with a different perspective and they are a little bit more knowledgeable on why they are here and what they want to do here. So when it comes to the seriousness of junior and senior year it gets a lot easier because at that point we taught them all the basics, and when I say we I mean Ms.Mao, because she was really on to them about things like email follow ups, academic check-in routines. What we would do for academic check-ins is we would put up on the board anybody who had an F, so that means if you had an F everyone would see it, so it was a very transparent culture of we’re in this together rather than it being up there to make fun of people and seeing who’s better and who’s not. It was all about we’re here to take care of business.”
Ms. Mao: “What we would do is that we would pair them, so if there were kids failing in bio we would pair them up and have them work as partners. But when 12th grade hit I wasn’t able to work with them as much since they were at 860.”
Mr. Mosley: “Even though Ms.Mao wasn’t at 860 with them, at that point we’ve established such a strong relationship that they were always reaching out to Ms.Mao or whoever they needed to follow up with.”
My next question to both of them was “have you taken any tips/tricks from when you guys advised together, to now your separate advisories?”
Ms. Mao: “So at first we were separate and we just did our own thing and then when we came together we combined what we taught to the other side, so whatever I taught the girls I then taught to the boys and vice versa.”
Mr. Mosley: “I always say that I learned and studied from the book of Mao because while the cultural side was my forte the academic routines was something I was weak at and so when we did come together it was really apparent to me the strong academic foundations that the girls had in contrast to the boys, and so I knew that I had to step my game up. And so coming in with my new freshman advisory this year I was really strong on getting the academics done, like I already knew I can build the culture but if the culture doesn’t include a strong sense of getting our work done and leaning towards academics then we don’t have the right balance. So that’s something I always took with me, because I always said that if I was going to advise again that's the FIRST thing I'm doing.”
Ms. Mao: “Now sometimes when Mr. Magaldi would teach or just talk to the kids I would watch and say you’re such a good dad, because the way he speaks to them and his choice of words are just something that I would never be able to say today, and I always say thank god he’s here because I would never be able to say it. He’s really good when they make mistakes because for me it's straight to scolding, why did you do this?, and just drilling them until they fix it, whereas he actually listens and talks to them like adults, and all I said was noted.”
So even with her being one of the founding teachers of this school, Ms. Mao is still learning skills on how to be an advisor from her co-advisor, and that is because there won’t be an exact perfect advisor. All the advisors in CSH are still learning to this day on how to be better the next day while learning at the same time.
The next question I asked the two was “What are your favorite memories of The Family?”
Mr. Mosley: “One of my favorite memories was with Steven Escalera during freshman year, and we would be having our parent teacher conferences and I sat there with him and his mom and we would be talking about why he was not doing well in school and he would just shut down, he did not say a word, he put his head down and just ignored me. I was like Are you serious, are you just going to ignore me?. But then fast forward to junior/senior year seeing him lead these conferences made me so excited and his mom was tearing up with saying this is my son, and so the development he had in a short amount of time really reinforced that i’m actually doing something, like it’s not just BS, the moves we are making and the strategies we are using are actually working. When I first started at CSH I had a lot of imposter syndrome so I like that I was not confident that I wasn’t making the right moves and so to have those moments where kids tell me it’s working are part of my big highlights.”
Ms. Mao: “Mine was the 9th grade camping trip. It was later in the year, and I had just gotten to know the girls and I feel like they trusted me and so at the end of each day they had free time, usually what happens is they would go to the other cabin and hang out with their friends, but I forced them each to bring a reading book and then we would get grapes to then force them to have reading time in the cabin while eating grapes. They loved doing it because it was all about getting comfortable, bringing snacks and having that positive environment.”
Then my final question to them was “After everything you both told me about The Family, do you guys think that you were THE powerhouse of an advisory in all of CSH history?”
Mr.Mosley: “Yeah.”
Ms. Mao: “I’m pretty sure that year we were dominating everything.”
Mr.Mosley: “We were the villains. Everybody wanted to be us. We didn’t set the bar, we WERE the bar. In every competition everyone would say if only they can beat The Family they would be happy, and we wouldn’t even win sometimes but they would just be happy that they beat US, and at that point if that’s everyone's goal we already won.”
Ms.Mao: “It would also be little things like turning in a permission slip, boom 100% submission the next day, free lunch for the first advisory to do this, little things like that — we were on it.”
Mr. Mosley: “The kids were brought into it too, they wanted to be number 1. I would play the role of a villain too, I would go to other advisors and just gloat to them. That’s because I wanted to instill a sense of competition because I feel like when you really compete that’s what makes you better. ”
After hearing from the main two advisors from The Family, I was able to get some questions answered from someone that was a part of the advisory, Kendra Solano.
The questions I asked were:
What do you think made your advisory so strong
What was your best memory of your time in the advisory
“I believe our advisory was strong because we had a solid foundation. Although we were all part of the same homeroom “the family”, the separation of advisories by gender our freshman year allowed us to build relationships within smaller, more comfortable groups before eventually merging with the boys. Mosley and Mao also played a significant role in our success. Although he was a cool teacher that could joke with us, Mosley made sure to hold us accountable to both our grades and goals. His balance of humor and discipline helped us maintain focus. Mao challenged us to exceed our potential. She made sure that students who were behind or had missing assignments stayed after school to complete their work(I don’t miss those days at all), which contributed to our academic success. Ultimately, our advisory was the best because we had smart, hardworking and competitive students.”
“I struggled with this question because I can’t remember a specific moment. Whenever we had a design competition, or any other sort of competition against other advisories everyone was always gunning for us cause we were very competitive,but we were always gloating a lot and won almost everything.”
After talking with Ms.Mao, Mr.Mosley, and hearing from a former student, I can say for myself that ‘The Family’ should go up as one of the strongest advisories to ever step foot into Comp Sci High, because to be able to say “we WERE the bar” says a lot.