TEA Collaborative Learning Group
Annual Report

Caldwell
2004

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How did your work with your team help you meet the professional growth goals you set for yourself?
This year I only really worked closely with John Bell. He and I worked in a Professional Learning Community (PLC) group based off the work of Rick DuFour. While I felt like I wasn't doing much for my own classes during the spring semester of 2004, I was contributing to the development of curricula for the Introduction to Physical Science class. Things improved greatly when I was given the opportunity to facilitate a PLC group during the fall semester. I hope to encourage this group to sign up to be TEA associates.

How did your work with your team impact your content knowledge and pedagogy?
For the most part, I am the only teacher with content knowledge of astronomy and geology at DCHS. Nedda Altschuld, a special education teacher, has a masters degree in geology and will be teaching a section of geology during the spring 2005 school year. I'm looking forward to collaborating with her and streamlining my curriculum. As far as pedagogy goes, I could not work with a better team. A couple of the teachers on the team have been teaching for almost 30 years each. They have excellent knowledge of "best practices" and strategies for teaching science. The other teachers in the group are excellent and bring fresh ideas. The group really values inquiry based instruction, demo's, and labs. I'm sure that we will each have a strong curriculum for each elective by the end of this year.

What materials / resources / workshops did you use / produce / host with your team members over the last year?
This year, the Introduction to Physical Science group was certainly the most productive of any in the school. We produced several pre and post assessments that are currently being implemented. Although my team didn't really work with me, I did get the opportunity to work with Dr. Jim Madsen, TEA Eric Muhs, and TEA Associate Ben Senson in creating an inquiry based chapter of activites related to meteorites. They flew into Colorado in February and we spent three days writing up activities and assessments related to the "science of detection" This work will be published in an NSF teacher resource that addresses the detection of neutrinos. Much of this work was applied to a TEA Regional Workshop I presented at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) on April 17, 2004. Seventeen teachers attended along with several museum educators and scientists. Parcticipants experienced exciting presentations by TEA Juanita Ryan, ANSMET P.I. Dr. Nancy Chabot, DMNS geolgy curator Dr. Jack Murphy, and ICE CUBE scientist Dr. Jim Madsen. I presented several meteorite-related activities and was assisted in the facilitation of the workshop by Ms. Gianna Sullivan of the DMNS All-Sky cameral project. In September, I attended a conference by Rick DuFour who has proposed the idea of Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). These are school sponsored groups of teachers that meet regularly to discuss curriculum issues.

Based on the past year, what ideas do you have to improve the effectiveness of your team interactions?
Interaction has improved this year through the use of our PLC groups. As facilitator, I get to work closely with John Bell and several other excellent teachers. Although they aren't part of my TEA mentoring team, I feel that I can really use my TEA experience to positively influence their curriculum. I hope to encourage them to sign up to be TEA associates.

Total hours of collaboration with each team member:
John Bell: 14 hours Christine Funk: 2 hours Rob Funk: 0 hours

Additional reflections:
It was difficult to work with Christine and Rob Funk. They just had their second child and are only working part-time presently. Christine also works with the biology PLC group. Most of our interaction time is informal and takes place at lunch or in passing.