Interconnectedness Part 2

Forgive me as I am a little behind, but one of our goals was to talk about a time we had some interconnectedness in our day to day teaching profession.  For me one of the biggest ways in which we do this is in our science PLC's.  We get together and discuss our data as a department and ask ourselves how we can become better as a teacher and as a department.  One of the most difficult things about doing this is you have to constructively judge your colleagues.  I am fortunate that my PLC contains 4 teachers total and we have developed a good trust, but often times this goal of giving good constructive feedback does not occur and this can create problems within the PLC.  This past month one of our major focuses was the ACT test and how we are going to approach preparing students to take this from a science perspective.  This is the first year all of our students will take the ACT and typically they have prepared with private classes or on their own.  Our department looked at ideas and our current ACT data to see what we can do to "reach the next level".  Lastly, when it comes to attitude, I think it is important to keep a positive attitude and always be asking yourself "How can we get better?" and "What do we need to do to get better?"  That is the purpose of a PLC and I think the interconnectedness we show as a department really helps us answer those two questions.