Developing Your Portfolio
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction mandates that all teacher candidates demonstrate their proficiency of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of the ten Wisconsin Teacher Standards in a portfolio prior to teacher licensing.
At Carthage, all teacher candidates are required to develop and maintain a portfolio throughout their college career. The process begins by purchasing the portfolio kit from the Carthage bookstore during foundation coursework. The portfolio kit includes the package of extra wide tabs, the portfolio text called How to Develop a Professional Portfolio, and the Steps to Becoming a Teacher booklet. Tabs should be labeled with the following items: table of contents, resume, educational philosophy, Standard 1 Subject Matter Knowledge, Standard 2 Human Development Knowledge, Standard 3 Adapting Instructional Strategies, Standard 4 Multiple Intelligence Strategies, Standard 5 Classroom Motivation and Management Skills, Standard 6 Communication Skills, Standard 7 Instructional Planning Skills, Standard 8 Assessment of Student Learning, Standard 9 Professional Commitment and Responsibility, and Standard 10 Partnerships. Taking EDUC 222 will also contribute to knowledge of writing rationales, selecting appropriate artifacts, and other crucial points in portfolio development. The portfolio will be continually updated throughout coursework to reflect developing knowledge and skills, and to document and describe the effectiveness of teaching experiences in classrooms. This is the process for gathering artifacts for the portfolio including information from general education classes (such as papers and research projects), in the content minor or major (major projects and papers), and in education courses (such as lesson plans, instructional materials, field experience journals). Teacher candidates must include a minimum of 1 artifact per standard to meet the criteria of the 10 Wisconsin Standards for Teacher Development & Licensure. Chosen artifacts should clearly represent and document the teacher candidates' understanding and attainment of each standard. The artifacts chosen should be clean and without marks.
All teacher candidates will be expected to clearly document and describe the impact of their pre-student teaching clinical experiences. Portfolios must contain evidence of the measurable development of the skills and knowledge of the students whom candidates worked with in their field experiences by presenting assessment information that has been collected to document the performance of the students. Additionally, the impact of the candidates' teaching experiences on their own teaching skills and professional dispositions needs to be documented in the portfolio along with field experience journals and reflection papers.
Finally, the candidate needs to include the written feedback received from Carthage faculty and cooperating teachers as they observed and evaluated the candidate's teaching skills and knowledge displayed in the pre-student teaching experiences.
Creation of the portfolio will begin in EDUC 101: Education and Society, with a statement of the candidate's teaching philosophy. Candidates will continue to develop their portfolios in EDUC 105: Characteristics of Exceptional Learners, and in EDUC 201: Educational Psychology and Assessment with the completion of the first pre-student teaching clinical experiences. Portfolios will be evaluated several times during the program. Course instructors will evaluate items in the candidate's portfolio. These evaluations will focus on items from the following classes: EDUC 101, 105, 201, 222, 272, 322, 352 and/or 357 and prior to student teaching. Other class instructors may also review pieces of and/or the entire portfolio. Additionally, all teaching candidates are urged to include samples of their best work from general education courses and courses in their major or minor. For the 300 and above education courses, candidates will be completing developmentally appropriate pre-student teaching clinical experiences and complete projects that should be included in their portfolios.
The education faculty committee will evaluate the entire portfolio at the time the candidate applies to student teaching. The review of the portfolio must be completed before student teaching can be approved. At that time, the portfolio is expected to be well developed and comprehensive. It should be organized to follow the Wisconsin Teaching Standards. The education committee faculty will provide the results of that evaluation to candidates in writing. For portfolio information, please consult the texts, How to Develop a Professional Portfolio, a Manual for Teachers, and the Carthage Portfolio Kit that were purchased, in the Carthage bookstore, during the foundation courses.
Candidates will continue to add to this portfolio throughout their courses and student teaching experience to document their teaching and their pupils' learning. During the student teaching seminar, candidates will hand in a reflection on student teaching paper and a copy of at least one other artifact that they have added to their portfolios from their student teaching experience. Review of this piece will be made by the Director of Student Teaching. All evaluations by cooperating teachers and college supervisors from both the pre-student teaching clinical experience and student teaching experience must be included in the portfolio.
It will be important to maintain the portfolio after receiving the Wisconsin Initial Educator License. Initial educators will be required to demonstrate proficiency in 2 or more of the ten Wisconsin teacher standards to move to the professional educator license and every five years throughout their teaching careers (see the Professional Development Plan tab in the portfolio kit). Students do a mock Professional Development Plan (PDP) during their student teaching seminar as practice for the PDP that will need to be developed to move from Initial Educator to Professional Educator status.