Materials for Your Teaching Portfolio

Over the course of your teacher preparation program, you will create and collect many materials that you may wish to include in your teacher portfolio as evidence of your knowledge, skills, and attitudes for teaching. These materials should show that you meet the standards for new teachers developed by INTASC, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium. The INTASC standards are available at http://www.ccsso.org/intascst.html#draft.

To help you begin developing materials for your portfolio, complete one or more of the following activities.

1. This chapter of your textbook describes four major purposes of schooling: intellectual purposes, civic purposes, economic purposes, and social purposes. For each major purpose, write a paragraph or two describing your thoughts on ways that effective teachers can help students accomplish goals that meet this purpose. (INTASC Principle 9)
2. Reflect on the section of this chapter in your textbook titled, "Schools as Cultures." Write down some ways that you, as a teacher, can help the children you teach to become socialized to American culture while respecting their individual cultural backgrounds. For example, how will you acknowledge or honor the cultural backgrounds of your students? (INTASC Principle 3)
3. This chapter of your textbook describes research on effective schools and effective teachers. The characteristics of effective teachers include efficient management of students' behavior to allow for large amounts of academic engaged time, time spent engaged in learning activities. Describe, specifically, your plans for managing such potentially disorganized times as the beginning of the school day or class period, transitions between activities, and occasions when a student is having discipline problems in class. (INTASC Principle 5)