Teaching Portfolio

Teaching Portfolio 30% of final course grade Your Teaching Portfolio has two key goals: (1) to promote better teaching (reflection, awareness) and (2) to document teaching achievements. What you create for this course is just the beginning. Our hope is that you will continue to build upon this throughout your time at Texas A&M-Commerce and make extensive use of this when you enter the job market and make your way towards tenure in your fabulous careers. Or elsewhere, should university-level teaching not be your goal. In any case, generating an effective Teaching Portfolio will likely lead to improved teaching, be that in the Writing Center, Writing Program, community center, K-12 classrooms, or anywhere else the formal teaching may occur. More on Developing Effective Teaching Portfolios can be found at http://sunconference.utep.edu/CETaL/resources/portfolios/ (University of Texas-El Paso) For this course, your Teaching Portfolio need not include all the elements important to the Teaching Portfolio you take on the job market and use to illustrate your teaching prowess. You’ll add other elements later, like syllabi, student evaluations, teacher observations, and the like. As you ready this for the job market or other venues, the portfolio will, necessarily, change in other ways. You’ll probably remove the voices of others, for example, except as they serve to further demonstrate your teaching achievements. It may be useful to think of this phase of your portfolio as focusing on the first goal (to promote better teaching) and later versions as focusing more on the latter (documenting teaching achievements). For now, your Teaching Portfolio should include the following:

1. Statement of Teaching Philosophy A “Teaching Philosophy” is usually a 1-2 page statement of your approach to teaching. For us this statement will focus on the teaching of writing. See “Resources” at http://english675.wordpress.com/ for a number of helpful tips, sites, and guidelines. For this, you should also draw from your blogs, readings, observations, interviews, and so on. Do this via alphabetic text, spoken reflections, or other means. The Teaching Philosophy serves as your introduction to your portfolio, but in generating it you should also remain mindful of its role in illustrating your approach to the teaching of writing.

2. Annotated List of 10 Specific and Relevant Resources This listing should include complete citation information and a few sentences describing what the resource is and why it should prove useful. This can include specific handouts found in the conference room, online resources found here/elsewhere, relevant items available in NCoW archives, or anything else you have found useful and think others might as well.

3. Interviews with Teachers in Our Program Interview at least two instructors in our program about their approaches to the teaching of writing. We will discuss and prepare a question list in class, but interview topics should range from responding to student writing, encouraging active reading, group activities, peer review, class discussions, and other subjects relevant to teaching and, especially, the teaching of writing--in the classroom or in the writing center.

4. Sample Teaching Activity Include any handouts, description of the activity itself, the course objectives associated with this activity, and any other relevant context.

5. Marked Paper Several times over the course of the semester, we will respond to student papers and discuss our choices together. For this item, you should include a paper with your written feedback. Be sure to remove the student’s name! Carter and Adkins, English 675 * Spring 2009