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Voices: What We’re Really Building is Community and Collaboration


Who do you recognize in this childhood photo? Read further to learn how two of these people are connected to Trevor!
 
My mom was an early childhood teacher, spending nearly 40 years in the classroom, including one as my kindergarten teacher, so perhaps I was destined to choose education as a career. But I was also lucky to have found a school so much like the elementary school I attended – a place where I feel known, where I am encouraged to take risks and where I love going to work each and every morning. 
 
Soon, when we make the move to the newly renovated Goodman Building, we will enjoy a designated cafeteria, additional outdoor space, a large separate gym and even an auditorium – but what excites me most is that the Lower School will be in one building, sharing all of our common spaces.  Pre-Kindergarten through 6th grade, together, bumping elbows (or perhaps not, since we’ll have 40% more space than we’re used to!) – this will allow us all to build an even stronger community and seek even more opportunities for collaboration.
 
Students will be in closer contact with their former teachers when we are all in one building; multiple grades will be sharing a floor.  Having last year’s teacher check in with a student as they pass in the hallways, offering a smile or a word of encouragement, adds to the feelings of warmth and security that our students should and do feel here at Trevor.  (I see this now in the 4th and 5th grade common room, where the 4th grade teachers still interact with their now 5th grade students – and I am looking forward to watching this happen with more grades.)
 
Our new rooftop space will allow for multiple homerooms to play together, broadening friendships and relationships throughout our community. Outdoor garden space will encourage collaboration – imagine how a unit on nutrition rises to a whole new level as students grow fruits and vegetables, work together (likely across multiple grades) and share ideas and discoveries as they learn about the life cycle of plants or how fruits and vegetables help make a body healthy.
 
Collaboration amongst and between teachers becomes much more of a reality when multiple grades and specialists are sharing the same hallways and walking past each others’ classrooms on a daily basis. Passing a classroom and hearing what another grade or class is working on often inspires ideas for connections between different curricula.  
 
While I would be remiss not to mention the light that will be pouring through our windows, illuminating the great work that is done in the classroom, what matters most in this move are the people and the program.  Form follows function, and the renovation of the Goodman Building is being done to fit our ever-evolving program.  This building is being renovated to help us do what we do best: collaborate, share, communicate, experience and grow.  While these great new spaces are something we very much look forward to, how we choose to use those spaces is what is really important.  And how we continue to support and encourage each other – in our academics, in performances, in our social growth – is what excites us as we begin to think about how we will use our new space.  We will be designing it for students in an era very different from the one in which I was a student in my mother's kindergarten class, but the values that my mom instilled in me back then continue to inspire me today and will do so as we move to our new building.
 
Araina Jewell is seated on the left in the front row, with white knee socks and pink ribbons in her hair, and her mom is the teacher on the right in the white dress.  Araina came to Trevor nine years ago as the Assistant Director of what was then known as the Elementary Division.  She moved on to become the Director of Early Childhood Division, and for a year was also Director of Lower School Admissions.  In 2011, she was named Director of the Lower School Division. 
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