When you first hear about high school, the first thing they warn you about is the workload. Every class has homework, and missing a day means hours of catching up. But thank goodness for the two weekly study halls the district has built into schedules — seminar. With 90 minutes on Tuesday and 45 on Thursday, seminar offers the freedom high school is supposed to be all about. The freedom to meet with teachers, make up that physics lab everyone forgot was due or even just play table football and chat about weekend plans.  But instead of seminar on Thursday, it’s advisory. 45 minutes dedicated to teachers across the school, begrudgingly clicking through a slideshow about some cliché school values.  The Shawnee Mission School District decided that spending $459,770 on Character Strong, an overpriced social-emotional wellness program, was more important than student work time. Every SMSD student and teacher has now traded a weekly 45 minutes of work time for a basic daily question, a se...