The Portfolio Primer is a brief excerpt of Teaching Portfolios: Presenting Your Professional Best by Patricia L. Rieman (McGraw-Hill, 2000). View the full table of contents.

Teaching Portfolios: What Are They, and Why Do You Need Them?
Suggested Table of Contents for a Teaching Portfolio
Suggested Table of Contents Based on INTASC Standards
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"Educators of teachers have two essential ethical and legal responsibilities. One is to support the development of the teachers with whom they work. The other is fundamentally one of accountability and plays itself out in policy arrangements between the state and teacher education institutions (e.g., credential and accreditation). These two responsibilities of any teacher education program contain an inherent tension:
How to provide supportive opportunities for learning while simultaneously being accountable to the standards set forth by the licensing agencies?" (Snyder, Lippincott, & Bower, 1998)

You can see the dilemma: educators wish to extract the personal best from the students, yet they must always look over their shoulders to see who is watching and evaluating them, the teachers. Enter: portfolios. Portfolios offer authentic assessment to both the educators and the administrators evaluating those educators. Some education majors claim that teaching portfolios are not worth the time they would have to invest in them. They may either feel confident that their skills will speak for themselves, or they sometimes believe that their achievements are not worth highlighting, and that it would be self-centered to focus so much attention on themselves. Either way, these educators are wrong. Maintaining portfolios of your skills and achievements is beneficial to you and to your future employers.

Why Portfolios?

A portfolio is more than a collection of your best teaching efforts; rather, a portfolio is a demonstration of your growth and improvement as a teacher (Farris, 1999). In this chapter, we'll explore three main reasons to maintain teaching portfolios:

• portfolios benefit you personally
• portfolios give your prospective employers valuable information about you
• portfolios help you to develop and voice your personal philosophies and theories of education.

How Portfolios Benefit You

As you complete your course credits, hours of study, and years of experience in college and in your pre-service student teaching endeavors, you are accumulating an on-going, vast array of outstanding examples of your growth as an educator. You will have papers of which you are particularly proud, glowing narrative descriptions of your first time in front of a group of students and critical but encouraging evaluations from your supervisors. Most importantly, you will have documentation that you possess both the desire and the knowledge necessary to become a dedicated professional and a life-long learner.

Another personal reason to maintain portfolios is to keep records of those wonderful projects, bulletin boards, learning centers, and thematic units you've created. As the years fly by, the memories of those unique creations will fade and you'll find yourself wishing you had kept copies of them to adapt for future students. You may be an experienced educator who wishes to teach in a different area and could finally use all those projects you learned about and created, but never got the chance to pursue when you were an undergraduate. Or you may be taking post-graduate classes and would like to refer to all those wonderful activities you implemented when you student taught.

Finally, teaching portfolios provide times for reflection. Reflection is the ability and disposition to think deeply and make decisions about which strategy is appropriate at any given time (Arends, 2001). We educators often get so swept up in the day-to-day (or minute-to-minute) hectic world of teaching that we forget to stop and think about how our lessons have turned out, or how we feel about the day's events. Maintaining a portfolio gives you the opportunity to develop the healthy habit of reflecting on the success (or lack thereof) of a lesson. Saving student work that shows how you wanted the lesson to turn out validates you and reminds you why it worked. On the other hand, saving student work that shows how the lesson failed miserably provides valuable input as well. You can learn from your mistakes and chuckle ruefully as you come across the unfortunate samples years later. Either way, you are taking the time to consider the effects of your efforts -- isn't that what we always wish for our students to do?

How Portfolios Benefit Your Prospective Employers

Employers who are seeking new employees to join their staffs are in precarious positions. They must rely on subjective evaluations such as interviews, letters of recommendation from people who are strangers to them, and the word - possibly lip service - of those being interviewed. The opportunity to see, to have the time to read and reflect upon, a professional portfolio gives employers the chance to affirm or discredit their intuitions with hard facts. The professional portfolio eliminates doubt and reinforces the recommendations given by you and your personal references. While employers may not have the time or the opportunity to examine each and every portfolio that comes their way, they may have certain criteria in mind as they skim through the artifacts. Another way you can use the portfolio as you interview is to have it organized so neatly that you can immediately pull out a certain section as the topic arises in the interview. Consider color-coding artifacts or having a usable table of contents.

As you'll see in our personal notes from administrators, their position as the determiners of the fate of educators is not an enviable one. Employers must weed out the sincere from the false, the knowledgeable from the vague, and the actual best qualified from the best-worded applicants. Portfolios provide authentic assessment of an educator's skills, accomplishments, and teaching philosophy. Portfolios may include glowing letters of thanks from parents or students, awards from the school or community, and certificates of additional coursework achieved. These artifacts compiled with complimentary letters of reference and moving personal statements all give employers a fair representation of exactly whom they're considering.

How Portfolios Help You Express Your Philosophy

Whether you realize it or not, you have already developed a philosophy or two regarding the field of education. There are instinctive answers to age-old questions regarding the purpose of schools and the best ways to teach, and the knowledgeable teacher realizes the importance of those philosophies. When you are aware of your points of view, you may speak more eloquently to issues of curriculum, classroom management, parental involvement, and the rights of both teachers and students. However, bear in mind that as you gain experiences in both your profession and in life in general, your philosophies of education may change.

As you apply for and interview for jobs, you will find that employers often ask either in person or on the applications for your philosophies of teaching. How do you plan to make a difference? Why do you wish to be a teacher? Having an answer ready for these questions shows that you are making an intentional decision to become an educator. Recognizing that your beliefs may change demonstrates your willingness to grow and to be a life-long learner.

Types of Portfolios

The term "portfolio" is one of the most commonly-used buzz words in the education profession today. Some of the people most likely to use portfolios are undergraduate education majors, student teachers, new teachers, tenured teachers, and higher
education faculty.

• Professional portfolios are maintained by undergraduate college students to document skills and experiences.
• Student teachers update their portfolios to prepare them for those crucial first interviews.
• New teachers keep all their lesson plans, evaluations, and communication documents in portfolios to show their organization, growth, and readiness for tenure.
• Tenured teachers wishing to become nationally certified, "master teachers" will include artifacts of post-graduate work accomplished, diversity of students taught, peer evaluations, letters of recommendation by parents and students, and copies of outstanding lesson plans and samples of student work following those plans.
• Finally, university level educators will wish to document their achievements, such as dissertations, publications, awards, speaking engagements, evaluations, and advanced coursework as they pursue full professorships.

As you can see, portfolio maintenance is developmental and on-going -- one may even consider it to be a major component of being a professional educator.

The Professional Portfolio as a Concept

In their 1998 manual from the University of Maryland, Developing a Professional Teaching Portfolio, A Guide for Educators (1998) Constantino and DeLorenzo explore the development and use of portfolios. The importance of portfolios is outlined in the text with the below listed reasons. As you can see by these eight attributes, creating your own portfolio is clearly a worthwhile, necessary endeavor.

• Portfolios facilitate the development of reflective thinking.
• Portfolios present a holistic view of your achievements.
• Portfolios provide an ongoing record of your accomplishments.
• Portfolios place the responsibility on you to develop and plan for your goals.
• Portfolios correlate with national and state initiatives toward performance-based assessment.
• Portfolios may be used to document and validate teaching accomplishments.
• Portfolios may be used to assess preservice and inservice teacher performances.
• Portfolios enhance job searches and interview processes.

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1. Statement of Teaching Philosophy
2. Credentials
   1. letters of reference
   2. resume
   3. official transcript
   4. record of courses
   5. teaching certificate
   6. endorsements
3. Teaching-related Experiences
   1. Pre-professional clinical experiences
   2. Employment in child-related fields
   3. Volunteer work with children
   4. Student teaching experiences
      1. sample lesson plans
      2. reflective journal
      3. sample student work
      4. photos of bulletin boards or projects you created
      5. letters from students or parents
      6. evaluations by university supervisor
      7. evaluations by cooperating/mentor teacher
   5. Classroom management plan
      1. sample discipline referral form
      2. sample letters to parents
      3. sample team policy
   6. Curricular Modifications
   7. How your lesson plans reflect state or national goals
4. Community Involvement
   1. Descriptions of volunteerism (other than earlier mentioned child-related)
   2. Copies of articles concerning or actual certificates of local awards or scholarships won
   3. Photos or articles concerning church or civic group participation
5. Professional Memberships & Honor Societies
   1. Certificates of membership in student chapters of professional groups, such as Council for Exceptional Children, International Reading Association, National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, National Education Association, etc.
   2. Certificates of membership or articles concerning membership in academic or service-related honor societies such as Phi Delta Kappa, Mortar Board, Omicron Delta Kappa, etc.
6. Extracurricular Activities
   1. Experience with sports you would be able to coach
   2. Experiences with journalism, yearbook, or other media
   3. Experiences with other club activities, such as chess, international clubs, or career-related clubs
   4. Roles of leadership in the above organizations

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1. Standard: Knowledge of Subject
   1. Record of Courses
   2. Practicum/Clinical experience
   3. Research papers
   4. Certificates of completion of workshops
   5. Summaries of related articles
   6. Bibliography of related texts
2. Standard: Learning and Human Development
   1. Sample lesson plans created for a variety of age groups
   2. Reflections on the difference between your 2^nd grade clinical students and your 6^th grade clinical students
   3. A bibliography of children's books with suggestions for age-appropriateness
   4. Term paper comparing and contrasting the theories of renowned child psychologists
3. Standard: Adapting Instruction
   1. Group project completed in your mainstreaming class
   2. Descriptions of curricular modifications you've tried and their outcomes
   3. Reflection on the role you played in an IEP meeting
   4. Letter from parents thanking you for the extra time you put into modifying the social studies test for their child with learning disabilities
   5. Examples of how you make curriculum more challenging for students with gifted abilities
   6. Narrative paper on your decision-making process when creating lesson plans to include students with English as a second language
4. Standard: Strategies
   1. Video of you teaching a lesson
   2. Self-evaluation identifying methods you've found success with and others that still need work
   3. Narrative descriptions of the methods used by your cooperating teachers
   4. Research project on the battles of controversy between experts in the field of classroom instruction
   5. Rationale for changing cooperative learning groups before mid-semester
5. Standard: Motivation and Classroom Management
   1. Letters home updating parents on coming projects and homework
   2. Examples of certificates you've created for achievements such as:
      1. improved behavior
      2. excellent effort
      3. all homework in on time for the month
      4. improved attendance
   3. Copy of classroom assertive discipline plan, including:
      1. rules
      2. consequences
      3. student/teacher-generated reward system
      4. charts
   4. Certificate of completion of special classroom management course, seminar, or workshop
   5. Letters of appreciation from parents grateful for the extra effort you gave to their child with emotional or behavioral problems
   6. Summaries of articles on classroom management and/or motivation
6. Standard: Communication Skills
   1. Letter to parents introducing yourself as student teacher
   2. Copies of minutes from team meetings showing your participation
   3. Copies of position or persuasive papers you've written
   4. Copies of group projects you've completed, demonstrating your ability to work in a group
   5. Certificates of your technological abilities, including:
      1. word processing
      2. internet
      3. data base
      4. spread sheets
      5. hyper links
      6. digital cameras
      7. scanners
   6. Address of your website with hard copies of documents included there
   7. Samples of your best handwriting in a hand-written essay (many districts require this in their employment applications)
   8. A video of you presenting a lesson to a class
   9. PowerPoint presentation of your philosophy of teaching
7. Standard: Planning
   1. Copies of lesson plans from each subject and grade level you've worked with
   2. Copies of curriculum you've created
   3. Copies of group presentations you've team-taught in your courses
   4. A schedule of the entire schoolday from your clinical experience
   5. Examples of seating charts you've designed
   6. Scope and sequence of a unit you wish to teach
8. Standard: Assessment
   1. Copies of established informal assessment charts you've used, citing authors
   2. Copies of informal assessments you've created, including your rationale
   3. Copies of objective tests you've created
   4. Examples of how you modify assessments for students with special learning needs
   5. Skill inventories you've used or would like to use
   6. Learning modality inventories you've learned how to use
   7. Summaries of articles on multiple intelligences
   8. Papers you've written on multicultural issues in assessment
9. Standard: Commitment
   1. Your statement of beliefs/philosophy of education
   2. Certificates of participation in community events
   3. Articles about your volunteer work with non-profit groups
   4. Your resume, focusing on the time you've spent working with children in and out of the school setting
10. Standard: Partnerships?
    1. Documentation of the help you provided to coordinate a community volunteer drive for your local public school system
    2. Your written thoughts on a legislative session you attended in your state's capital when they discussed education issues
    3. Letters from your local legislators thanking you for meeting with them to discuss education issues
    4. Minutes from the school board meeting you attended to observe how their decision-making process works
    5. Letters from a parent/teacher organization thanking you for your help
    6. Letters you've written to local businesses suggesting ways that they can participate to help improve public education in your town

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FolioLive
http://www.foliolive.com/

Creating the Ultimate Teaching/Interview Portfolio
http://www.teachnet.com/how-to/employment/portfolios/

Teaching Portfolios
http://www.utep.edu/cetal/portfoli/

Electronic Portfolio Samples
http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/class/edlf/589-07/sample.html

Professional Development: Teaching Portfolios
http://www.tcet.unt.edu/START/profdev/port.htm

Career Services: Portfolios
http://www.uwec.edu/career/careerplanning/jobsearch/faq/04pf.html

Electronic Portfolios: Students, Teachers, and Lifelong Learners
http://www.eduscapes.com/tap/topic82.htm

Using Technology to Support Professional Reflection
http://www.sasinschool.com/resource/pages/ethread_reflection.shtml

For more information on writing resumes and other employment tips, go to
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Another engaging site is the "Damn Good Resume" website. For suggested readings, examples of resumes, weblinks, and other relevant information, go to
http://www.damngood.com/

For examples of resumes, writing tips, and related links, go to
http://www.4resumes.com/

For more information on the NBPTS, go to
www.nbpts.org

For Free Gradebook Software -or- a Complete Classroom Organizer to help teachers communicate with students and parents, go to
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1557661561/specialink...

For a list of websites that focus on issues relating to diversity and inclusion, go to
http://scrtec.org/track/tracks/s02326.html

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