Teaching Portfolios

The start of something big...

© koalazymonkey

A Teaching Portfolio (sometimes also called a Teaching Dossier or Teaching Profile) is a valuable tool used by teachers to document who they are, what kind of teacher they are and what they have achieved.

It is often used by teachers to support their application for a job so along with their CV/Resume and application letter, they will include their portfolio to give the school a good idea of the kind of teacher they can expect to see.

However, for trainee teachers and newer teachers (not to mention experienced teachers), a teaching portfolio can be much more than this. It can be an excellent method of self-evaluation and a very useful tool to improve their teaching. Some even develop further into useful resources for teaching.

Essentially, to begin with at least, a Teaching Portfolio is a collection of thoughts, lists and notes about your teaching. It can include your CV/Resume, classes you take, students who have stood out for one reason or another, lesson ideas and jottings and so on.

When you first start, it can seem slightly random and consist of nothing more than a collection of notes scribbled on paper to keep everything in order but as the notes build up, you will soon discover you have an incredibly useful collection of material which reveals a lot about you as a teacher and can help you clarify your teaching style and improve the way you teach.

And finally it can also be used to store teaching ideas, lesson plans and so on.

A Basic Portfolio

There are no set standards for the way in which a portfolio is compiled and laid out. What we have here is a good, simple way which you can use to develop your own portfolio and become a better teacher.

First Pages

Firstly you need to reflect in a general way about yourself as a teacher. To begin with you can begin by simply answering these questions:

1. Why am I a teacher?
2. What kind of teacher am I?
3. What kind of teacher do I want to be?

For example:

Just by spending a few minutes reflecting on these questions you may well find certain aspects of your teaching coming out that you were not aware of earlier. Even something as simple as preparing this part of your portfolio could change the way you teach the next time you are in a classroom.

Of course you are free to revisit your answers over time. Checking back on this page in a year will often lead to a few surprises!

Qualifications & Courses

The next step is to collect together your qualifications and courses. This is more detailed than your CV/resume in that it includes shorter courses and seminars e.g. a weekend course on using drama in the classroom, perhaps videotaping some of your lessons for critical analysis, seminars on using a new piece of teaching equipment, attending presentations by publishers for a particular coursebook, etc. In other words, all those activities which have had an impact on your teaching.

Another way in which this differs from your CV/resume is that you can also include here your reaction and feelings towards the courses you’ve taken. With each entry, write a short piece where you can say what the course meant to you and how you felt about it. For example:

Again, by doing this you may well see a pattern emerge and it will clarify in your mind the kind of teacher you are, what aspects you find interesting and perhaps inspire you to look further into different aspects of teaching.

Further Development

You can use what we have suggested above not only for yourself, but also to present along with a job application – although you might find it useful to tweak a few of your comments to make sure it fits in with the kind of teacher the school may want!

However, if you are really interested in developing as a teacher, there are other aspects you can include in your portfolio.

• Students – it is often helpful to keep a note of students who stand out in your class for one reason or another. Perhaps they are incredibly noisy and disruptive; perhaps they are brilliant or perhaps the opposite. Simply make a note of who they are, what the issue is and how you are dealing with it. The idea here is that if, for example, a student is particularly slow you can keep a record of how you are dealing with the problem and ideas you have tried; later on you might find you have a similar student in another class and you can go back over your notes to check for proven ways to help improve the situation.
• Tips & Tricks – any time you come across a good idea for your class, simply note it down. Maybe you don’t need it now, but who knows, maybe in a couple of years you’ll be browsing through the list and find something perfect for a class you’re taking then.
• Lesson Plans & Ideas – keep them in your portfolio, but also make sure you add your user notes to them. Suppose you find lesson plan for your class online; by all means use it but also remember to look at it afterwards and critically analyse how it performed in class. Simply by spending 5 minutes going over the plan can change a moderately good lesson plan into the most brilliant lesson plan in the universe!

Electronic Portfolios

Often a first portfolio will be nothing more than scribbled or typed notes. However, to keep things organised you might like to try using notetaking software.

• OneNote - supplied with Microsoft Office this does cost but is ideal for masses of notes categorised into different areas.

• Flashnote - free notes manager for PC; it's basic but for a start can be very useful.

There are also online alternatives which link with your computer and/or smartphone; Evernote is perhaps the best known example here.

Conclusion

At its heart, the idea behind a portfolio for teaching is to allow you to stop and think about your teaching. It’s there to provide a few minutes of reflection (or analysis) which will help improve your teaching.

To this end, be honest. If you have problems with a student, then while you might not be able to admit them to your DoS, you can certainly let your portfolio know. And while you might feel uncomfortable telling anyone else you think you suck as a teacher, by admitting it to your portfolio you can not only halve the problem by sharing it, you might also be able to come up with a strategy to remove it altogether.

Oh, and on this final point, remember, if the portfolio does begin to get personal, remember to password protect it from prying eyes!