The Extraordinary Educators Podcast

Fostering Collaborative Learning Environments with Brooklin Trover

• Danielle Sullivan & Sari Laberis • Season 5 • Episode 17

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Picture navigating your workspace or classroom with a profound sense of connection and mutual respect, where everyone's unique needs are understood and catered to. How much more could we achieve? How much more progress could we make? This episode guides you through this journey with Brooklin Trover, National Director of Curriculum Instruction at Curriculum Associates, who believes in the transformative power of building solid relationships at work. Brooklin brings to the table invaluable insights on fostering a culture of understanding and respect, and how this contributes to accelerating learning and making significant strides in our professional and educational spaces.

We then shift gear to the realm of education, where Brooklin shares her unique perspectives on flipping the conventional classroom script. She illustrates how creating an environment of trust and collaboration with students and colleagues can kickstart a more effective learning cycle. Brooklin unveils some of her tried-and-tested strategies, like leveraging leadership support and sentence frames, to boost relationship building within a school community. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom from Brooklin, guaranteed to leave you feeling inspired to reshape your work and learning environments into more human-centric spaces.

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Sari Laberis:

Curriculum Associates presents the Extraordinary Educators podcast with hosts Danielle Sullivan and Sari Laberis. Hear tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you.

Danielle Sullivan:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Extraordinary Educator podcast. This is Danielle.

Sari Laberis:

And it's Sari. This week we are joined by one of our wonderful colleagues, Brooklin Trover, who is a national director of content and implementation at Curriculum Associates.

Danielle Sullivan:

Yes, and Brooklyn. I am so grateful that she and I are in the same team at Curriculum Associates and it's always a pleasure to talk to her because she brings the human to all topics, and today we're actually going to talk about relationships and how to be more human at work and why that is important.

Sari Laberis:

Yes, and how it ultimately will help you with your students. So here's our conversation with Brooklin, and please feel free to check out her blog that she wrote about this topic as well

Danielle Sullivan:

Hi Brooklyn. Welcome back to the podcast. So what are some things that are top of mind for you lately?

Brooklin Trover:

Well, the year is just going and humming and I feel like there's so many good pieces out there this year with the energy of really recovering from time away from school or learning or interruptions or anything like that, and this year just feels like we are making progress. I like it. Sizzle energy.

Danielle Sullivan:

So, in thinking about making progress, what are some major foundational pieces that, no matter what, no matter what grade you teach, no matter where you are, what your role is, help make sure to create the right systems where students don't not just learn but also grow?

Brooklin Trover:

It's a perfect way to ask that it doesn't matter where you are or what grade. It's always always, always going to be about knowing more about your students, making those stronger relationships with them and then knowing more about them so you know how to accelerate their learning. How can we catch up faster, how can I fill in some holes or level up some extensions for you? But we got to know more about them and I think people are realizing that now. I don't just teach fifth grade, I teach these fifth graders. So for the next 180 days, or however many your school year is, they've really been approaching that with like, what am I going to do with the time I have and the kids I have? Here we go. I like it.

Sari Laberis:

It's such an important mindset shift and one that I think could be a silver lining coming out of the pandemic. And if we think about what we've talked about here, Danielle, with collective teacher efficacy and how it's not only important to get to know the students in your classroom like you described Brooklin but actually within your whole school community, so you feel like you are in charge of all of their learning and that you can contribute to their experience. You can't do that if you don't have relationships with other adults in your building, right?

Brooklin Trover:

100%. You said something really important there. I think that has resonated in my heart. It's our students. They're our students.

Sari Laberis:

Right. So curious from your experience working with educators, being an educator and a leader yourself. If teachers are kind of feeling siloed in their egg crates behind the closed door of their classroom they have so little time during the day, what are some ways that they can really work on building relationships with each other first, to then support knowing all of their students across the building.

Brooklin Trover:

Yeah, there's a lot of different styles for this and I think, like teaching, some people think teachers are automatically extroverts that love to talk to each other all the time, and there are some that are.

Brooklin Trover:

Or they think the opposite, like, especially middle school, like oh, he's just always in his room doing his own thing, and there's a lot of labels or judgments that we put on people through our observations of a workplace at the school. But if you step back for a second and think about all the people that work at a school, you're all doing one common thing. You're working for the kids at that building and it doesn't matter if you're an introvert, extrovert, team player, plc leader, you know. And then pick any of the other support roles at that school. RSP, band, you know the custodian, the secretaries, the academic coach, you could keep going and going and everyone is there doing their best for the people at the school that you're serving the kids, the students, and so I think just seeing that commonality and then recognizing it as a commonality is a really good way to have better relationships with the people around you and it's just internal respect, you know, I see you.

Danielle Sullivan:

Yeah, and that is so important, especially, like you said, how sometimes we make assumptions about people or sometimes we are just doing our thing and our doors are closed. So, in your experience, what are some ways to create more connections and focus on building more relationships with your colleagues?

Brooklin Trover:

I think part of the success that I've seen in a few buildings or districts even, is leadership support in that action, just facilitating it. And you know there's a structure that teachers use all the time of sentence frames, right. Like if we give them the sentence frames the students can use their own thinking to fill in but I'm giving them this boost. I kind of think of creating relationships across the school for leaders, as they need to put those sentence frames in place. They need to require people to sit in different places at staff meetings. They need to have time to check in with each other and give them some structure to do that. They need to create spaces in the lounge and in the office that are welcoming for everybody and show off the things that people are doing.

Brooklin Trover:

You know I've been amazed on our team in education when our manager creates space for us to talk about what's going on and what have you been doing. It's one of my favorite parts of us coming together because I get to see the successes of others and I start smiling. I'm happier when I know what's going on with you and how hard you're working for the teachers and the students that we serve. Imagine that right at the school level. It's the same thing. You just got to give people space and leaders should create it. It can't always fall on the teachers themselves.

Sari Laberis:

That's such an important point. And then when you create those systems and spaces, it happens naturally and then you get happier teachers and happier teachers make happier students. I'm curious, do you mind describing a little bit about the system you all have in place? I know this is likely via Zoom, but for leaders and teachers listening if they want to replicate this, is it just a protocol you all follow, or what exactly? Do you guys go around and just each share, or what does that look like?

Brooklin Trover:

You know it's even a little more informal now, but there's kind of a continuum of it. Sometimes we all need to go and what we'll do is just popcorn it out. So if I go first and then I'll call on another person until everyone has gone, it helps you listen to who's gone and who hasn't. In a small group we have like 15 of us so you can keep track. And other times it's just the openness of what's gone well out there and it's just. You know, something that's gone well could be a very small thing, it could be a very big thing, but we all know it has to do with impact, what's gone well out there in your work for others. And I think sometimes what's really fun is when someone shares about someone else. I heard that Danielle da-da-da-da-da, and then Danielle add to it, and that's community, that's us recognizing and it's so organic. But we just have space to do it.

Danielle Sullivan:

That's so true, and I think a piece of that is also leadership creating the right conditions that everyone feels safe to share, and everyone feels that when you are sharing, it's not a brag, it is, it's lifting up like all the boats are rising in the harbor. So, as leaders, thinking about that, I mean some things that I've seen school-based related to are a Went Well board, or you could have something in the staff room where people can, you know, a compliment corner. So there's, there's other ways to operationalize the things Brooklin's talking talking about, and, if you want more information, Brooklin did write a blog, too, on this. We, of course, are going to link that and some of Brooklyn's other blog posts in this episode, because Brooklin has been a fan favorite here at the Extraordinary Educator podcast, which brings me to. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. So Brooklin.

Danielle Sullivan:

I'm thinking about, I know, but your last before we close. If you are listening as a new leader or you're a teacher leader, what's one step or 1% they can do to move towards connection, building relationships or even cultivating more happiness and joy at work?

Brooklin Trover:

I think the 1%. Let's talk to the teacher leaders out there, have a grade level meeting, right? Don't start with business, start with each other. That's it. Just ask a question that everyone can just enjoy answering and learn more about each other. That's a good 1%.

Sari Laberis:

Perfect. Thanks so much, Brooklin. Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter, @curriculumassoc, and on Instagram, @myiready. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducators@cainc. com. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation, please leave a review.

Danielle Sullivan:

And remember, be you, be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators Podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Editing by Whiteboard Geeks, social media by Atziri Hannon, guest booking by Sari Laberis, production by Hayley Browning. This podcast is copyright, material and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.