What should I put in my portfolio?

It's that dreaded piece of work that has student teachers shaking in their boots...the portfolio. If your anything like me, the portfolio didn't exist until it was briefly mentioned in second year, and since then it has become a source of stress and mystery. So here's the biggy: What the heck do you put in your portfolio? This question was asked directly to my tutor and his answer was as ambiguous as you could possibly get: 'your portfolio should be a reflection of yourself'. I found this about as helpful as a kick in the death. While I would definitely agree that there is no set definition of what a portfolio should look like and contain, and I am in no means an expert, I have gathered some ideas from the work of others.

First of all it is a good idea to work out how you want to present your portfolio, as this will be a major factor in what you will include, and the way that you will lay this out. For example, do you want to go traditional and opt for a hard-copy portfolio? Or are you going to more modern and do an online portfolio. There are definite advantages to both. A traditional portfolio is something tangible that you can take with you into interviews and give to the panel to show them. However given that there is one and only one of this portfolio, you cannot leave it for the assessors to come back to after the interview has happened. Online portfolios do address this problem, as you can simply give the panel the URL for your website, and hope they take the time to look at it. The downside is that you cannot guarantee they will do this, or that they will know how to use the nifty and innovative technology you have utilised. At the end of the day there are pro's and con's for both forms, so just pick the one that is the easiest and most reflective of you as a practitioner.

Once you have chosen your format, you must begin to collate and collect evidence that demonstrates what you know and have done on your rounds: go ahead, show off how awesome you are! I have found a good way to structure this is by using the VIT standards or the key selection criteria as your framework. This is a good way to make sure you are including relevant and useful examples.

In most of the portfolio's I have seen, they usually begin with or include an 'about me' section and incorporate things like a photo of you, your hobbies and interests, why you decided to become a teacher and the journey that you took to become one etc. This will be pretty straightforward and specific.

If you are using the standards as a guideline, pick things to include that demonstrate how you meet that criteria: for example lesson plans that you have designed, assessment tasks that you have designed, samples of student work if you have them, photo's of you teaching, comments made by your assessors, comments made by students, examples of student interactions, videos of you teaching etc.  Find things that demonstrate how you meet each standard or criteria, describe how each piece of evidence denotes this and link it to a little bit of theory or guidelines. Don't overload the viewer with theories, but rather name a theory or idea from POLT that is relevant to what you have done, and to you as a practitioner. For each criteria it is a good idea to include a brief statement of your beliefs regarding that criteria so that the portfolio is a reflection of you :)

For those of you who are lucky enough to have a few years left of your course, start collecting your evidence now and KEEP EVERYTHING! I'm so mad at myself for not keeping a lot of the lesson plans and units of work that I have run during rounds. While I didn't have student responses to many of the assessments I had designed, the units of work themselves proved that I can plan and assess. Also, take notes during your classes, so that you can remember later what worked and what didn't. This will make anecdotes easy to refer to later. I was given a useful tool for collecting evidence for each standard, which I will put up in the next couple of days, so you can see what you have and what you might need.

For a really good example of a teaching portfolio made on prezi, please take a look at:

http://prezi.com/zo6opjr6t-bj/rivera-teaching-portfolio/

For a much more detailed explanation of what to put in a teaching portfolio, this document was compiled by the University of Adelaide:

http://www.education.adelaide.edu.au/higher-education/portfolio/t_portfolio.pdf

I hope that this has been useful! For more examples of portfolios, or if you have any questions, please comment!

Happy Teaching!