Collaboration vs. Lone Wolf: Collaboration Series Part 1 [S4 E101]

Listen to the full episode below:

How would you describe the teacher team that you’re a part of in your school? Collaborative and aligned? Divided and negative? The climate of your teacher team truly can make or break your experience as a teacher.

Having a team to lean on is everything. Teachers can not sustain this profession without having collaborative team relationships. If your team is the opposite of collaborative, and the dynamic is causing a toxic work environment, then it’s time to work towards fixing it. We want to start this important conversation, which sometimes can be an awkward one! 

 

TAKE NOTES:

THE COLLABORATION SERIES WORKBOOK

We created this series so that you could listen to each episode in layers and work through them either on your own or with your staff. To help you do this, we’ve created a specific workbook full of notes pages, reflection questions, and doodle pages to help you keep track of the most important moments.

 

It can feel scary  to start conversations around things like collaboration and changing the way you’ve always done things. These can be hard conversations to have, and so we are here to share our experiences, and share our perspectives, to help you take the first steps towards fixing what might be broken within your team.

We're also here to break down this idea of “close your door and just teach”. Many of you may have gotten that advice, or even given that advice at some point, because collaboration hasn’t worked well at your school in the past - or maybe isn’t even set up to facilitate fostering these relationships. 

How do you know what to do on your own and what to do with your team? How do you find a happy medium? At the end of the day, we really want this episode to be something that you can share directly with your team and use it as a place to kind of diagnose where you're at, and make a plan for where you want to be. 

Ultimately, this is your team, your school, your colleagues…and we want to help you create your ideal collaborative work team situation. When everyone can come together, and ditch the “lone wolf” mentality, you’re going to move forward professionally and you’re going to move your kids forward.

If you’re a teacher who is absolutely fed up at every PLC meeting, we beg you to put aside your annoyance, take a deep breath, and give this a shot. If you’re in a leadership role, we beg you to break up the toxicity and prioritize creating a culture in your building that makes it a place where people look forward to being every single day. It’s really on all of us to check out attitudes and think about what’s best for the future of our students at our school!

In this episode, and a few more to come, we’ll discuss what the ideal collaborative work team situation looks like and how you can make it a reality at your school.

Topics Covered:

  • What we’ve seen work really well on a grade level team and what we’ve seen work poorly

  • Shifting from “my students” to “our students”

  • The power in positive contribution and naming your cohesive team goals

  • The massive benefits of having some sort of team alignment in your curriculum 

  • How having the “lone wolf” mentality can lead to detrimental effects for you, your team, and your students

Resources:

Related Episodes:

More about Brave New Teaching:

Join hosts Amanda Cardenas (Mud & Ink Teaching) and Marie Morris (The Caffeinated Classroom) in discussions about being brave, trying new things, and all things teaching! As seasoned classroom teachers, Amanda and Marie bring their experience, insight, energy, and oh, so many opinions and ideas... It's time for all teachers to take their classroom and teaching practice into their own hands!

Tune in on your favorite podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Amanda Cardenas