Professional Teaching Portfolios - Educational Documents

Welcome back to my series on Professional Teaching Portfolios. This is the third post. If you missed the first two, you can go back to learn about the "Introduction and Philosophy of Education" and "Resume and Reference Letters".

Today we will be delving into the "Educational Documents" section. This is a great place to keep your professional certificates and documents in one place. As with the rest of my portfolio, these pages are places in plastic sheet protectors. As a safety precaution, always use copies, not original documents. This is going to be traveling around with your to interviews, etc. and is far to easy to misplace. Keep the originals in a safe place, filed away and put a copy in your portfolio.

Here is a list of the documents I have included in my portfolio:

-my University Diplomas

-my Teaching Licenses (I have four for different provinces)

-Criminal Record Check

-University Transcript

-A List of Teachable Courses

-Dean's List Certificates

-Teacher Evaluation Reports from my Principal

-Certificates from PD Workshops

Keep it organized so that you can find it if you need to show a particular document. If you didn't get great marks on an exam, don't include it! This is supposed to show off your assets.

Have fun! 
See you soon!

 

Professional Teaching Portfolio - Resume and References

I am back today to continue walking through my Professional Teaching Portfolio. If you missed this introductory post, you can see it here. 

Today we are going to take a look at the Resume and References section.

 My Resume:

Over the years, my resume has changed format a few times. Here are a few general pieces of advice I like to give.

1) Make it look professional. If you have a template that you can plug in your name and contact information as the header, great! It means that your are front and centre at the top of every page. Make sure the font is a standard, legible type (no comic sans or "fontmoochers")

2) Keep it simple. I tend to ramble and can get pretty wordy. So I limit myself to bullet points. Less clutter on the page allows readers to find the information they are looking for more quickly.

3) Emphasize the experience that matters. If you are applying for a teaching job, each individual date that you worked those retail jobs in the summer are probably not going to catch the principal's attention. Lump them together as "Various retail positions" and list the specific stores in the bullet description. Potential Employers are far more interested in seeing the type of experience that shows you are a good fit for that job.

4) Sell yourself! Include the outside experiences, training courses, volunteer jobs that you have completed. This time around, I decided that listing my Community Experiences chronologically didn't make sense. So I lumped them together into categories. (For me, Music, Drama and Community Work). 

5) Include your Professional Development. It is important that employers see your dedication to your field, taking extra workshops, and the topic or subject you have pursued. Below you can see that, again, I put the list into categories for ease of viewing.

 6. Last, but certainly not least, PROOFREAD! Do it yourself at least 3 or 4 times. Ask a good friend or your mom to give it a look. Check and double-check your email and phone numbers. It is even more important for teachers to avoid grammar and spelling errors.

References:

There are two categories of references: Personal and Professional

Professional References should be people who can speak directly to your teaching abilities. This could be your Practice Teaching evaluator, your mentor teacher, your principal or vice-principal, an Education Assistant working in your classroom, or a close co-worker. If you don't have a lot of teaching experience, choose a reference from another job that has relevant experience (summer camp, tutoring, etc.)

Personal References should be credible people who have known you outside of a work setting. This could be someone you volunteered for or with, a pastor, a choir director. Avoid family members, as their close relationship makes them seem biased. It is nice to find someone well spoken that you know can give you a glowing recommendation.

I recently asked a number of people involved with my school to write me recommendation letters to include in my portfolio. I had one parent write the most beautiful recommendation letter! She is also a supply teacher and dedicated volunteer at the school, so she is in my classroom a lot. She highlighted everything I could have asked her to!

I also asked a co-worker, my principal, my E.A., the Occupational Therapist that works in our school (we have worked closely together for three years with four different students), and a couple of Grade Eight students (who I taught in grade 5/6 and continued to work with in choir). It feels really nice to have these beautiful letters to look back at, as well.

 So there you have it. I hope these guidelines help when you create your own resume.

On the job update, I have only been called for one interview and it is a 30% part time position. I am doing the interview tomorrow, but I am disappointed I didn't get called for any of the other positions. I am hoping more might get posted (or re-posted) over the next few months. I am starting to wonder if I should just trust that I will get enough supply days to compensate for my salary (going from private school to public brings a pay increase. I would only have to supply 2.5 days a week to bring in the same amount as my current salary!) So more waiting!

See you soon!

Professional Teaching Portfolio: Intro and Educational Philosophy

Since I am waiting on phone calls from the applications I put in, I decided to update my Professional Teaching Portfolio. Our Education program had us make one for one of our courses. I have not kept up on it much since I began teaching, updating it last in 2008. But I am hoping for an interview soon, and the one time I don't bring it will be the time they ask! 

 In case you are unfamiliar with Teaching Portfolios, or looking for ideas, I thought I would take a few posts to run down the way mine if organized and what I have included this time around. 

 First of all, I am an elementary teacher (usually on the primary junior end, at that) so I include a lot of colour in mine. It also reflects my personality! I have a favourite paper I use for all of my section dividers and permanent pages. This time around, I wanted to change a few titles, and being a little bit obsessed with format, decided to redo all of the dividers. 

Here are the main sections in my portfolio:

 1. Educational Philosophy 

2. Table of Contents 

3. Resume 

4. Reference Letters 

5. Educational Documents 

6. Photo Pages 

7. Lesson Plans 

8. Teaching Aspirations 

*My portfolio used to include a goals page. I would like to put this back in, but since I didn't feel I have the time right now to update this, I didn't want to include one that was out of date. 

My first page is a copy of my binder title page. This includes both my name and the date I last updated my portfolio.

Immediately afterward is my Educational Philosophy. Our professors were adamant that this is the first piece of information that should be included in our portfolios, even before the table of contents. 

I am a very visual person and had to fiddle with the spacing of each line and section. I also have a tendency to be wordy, so I thought that breaking it into sections that were clear and concise kept things neat. It was interesting this time around to see what I updated and changed after teaching full time for four years.

Below is my Educational Philosophy. Feel free to use bits and pieces or just some inspiration if you are writing one of your own. Just a note, I have another on for my Philosophy of Christian Education for when I was apply for private school jobs. It is mostly the same with a few additional comments.

Educational Philosophy

Education is a process that involves many elements working together for a common goal.

I believe that…

Every child can learn and has the potential to succeed.

Every student is an individual and has their own learning style.

Every student should be assessed in the way that allows them to best express their abilities.

Learning should be student centred.

Learning should be authentic and interdisciplinary.

Learning should be interactive, engaging and creative.

The classroom climate is set by the teacher’s attitude.

The classroom creates a family of learners, working together.

The classroom should be a safe, inviting and stimulating environment.

Teachers are only part of a team.

Teachers should have high expectations.

Teachers should be role-models for their students;

both in the classroom and in the community.

Teachers must go above and beyond their teaching duties.

Teachers should be involved with extra-curricular activities.

Teachers must be adaptable, constantly evaluating their teaching practices and seeking to improve their methods.

Teachers work with students, parents, colleagues, administrators and community members.

After this document is my Table of Contents, which simply lists my section headings.

Everything is put into plastic page protectors which makes it easy to update pages as well as keeping documents from holes and damage when pages are flipped.

Stay tuned this week for a closer look at my resume and references.

See you soon!