Face it!! Teaching in the 90's is competitive. Educators who possess a visual record of their achievements, accomplishments, strengths, and methods have a better chance of reaching their goals. Such goals may include advancement, promotion, or obtaining the penn ultimate job. This visual record is termed a teaching portfolio. What is a teaching portfolio, what are the contents, and how do you present one? Read on...
What is a teaching portfolio?
A teaching portfolio is a reflective summarization of your career as an educator. This portfolio may also include documentation of certain significant accomplishments and achievements. Each portfolio should be individualized but may follow the standard of two sections. The first section makes claims for excellence in teaching, and the second is comprised of appendices which support these claims.
What should be included in this portfolio?
The portfolio usually contains: licenses, descriptions of classes you've taught, a description of recently attended graduate classes or in-service seminars, sample lesson plans, creative handouts, letters of commendation, and any honors received. This is only a sampling of the items included and yours may include all or different items. This section also includes a statement of philosophy of how you teach and why. If you have access to some form evaluation of your teaching, (Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET)) or any other objective tools to evalute your teaching progress, this would be a good place to display it.
Presentation
Presentation, presentation, presentation... Presentation is to a teaching portfolio as location is to real estate. You can have the best credentials in the world, but if looks chinsy, chances are it won't be well received. Spend some time looking for a good quality binder, and have it embossed (a bible store can do it) with gold letters with your name. You'd be surprised how nice and professional it looks. You may also want to consider using top loading heavy plastic sheet protectors to ensure easy additions or deletions of material.
