One artifact of my teaching that demonstrates strength in TESS Domain 4D: Participating in a Professional Community are notes that I keep during meetings with my professional learning community.   The copy of my notes, shown in Figure 1, displays professional responsibility because they are evidence of how I assume an active role in meetings by recording key points in our planning. In my experiences with PLC meetings, there is typically someone appointed to take notes for the sake of the whole group. To me, it is important to also keep notes for myself in order to use the meeting time effectively, inform my lesson planning process, and hold myself and my colleagues accountable. I value the time I have to collaborate with other teachers and taking notes encourages me to stay on task. Usually, I have my laptop with me at PLC meetings, but I prefer handwritten notes because they eliminate additional distractions that are present online. 

     At the time these notes were taken, I was a new student teacher at a junior high school and there was so much for me to learn. Notice how I have written down questions that I had during the meeting- “What do we mean by assertion?” “What is duck season/wabbit season?” Later on, I came to understand that these terms were connected to their curriculum for teaching argumentation. However, I jotted these questions down instead of asking them aloud in the meeting for the purpose of maintaining a focused dialogue and using our time wisely.  Another reason I view my handwritten notes as a professional strength is because of how they direct what I will do before the next meeting. I can take an idea that was discussed in the meeting, such as “show them examples of good assertions” and turn that into a task for me to complete. This motivates me to make progress in my lesson planning by accumulating strong examples of assertions for my students. Turning my notes into a to-do list also prepares me to share my plans and ideas with my colleagues so we can collaborate, motivate, and inspire each other in our meetings and design better lessons and units than we could alone.