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.
- Compare earlier schools of the level at which you hope to teach to today's schools at that level, using the information in your textbook and the web links for this chapter to help you find historical information. What has changed? What remains the same? Analyze how your knowledge of historical contributions to current-day education can help you either adapt to today's conditions or work to make effective changes. (INTASC Principle 9)
- Consider how American educational history affects the current-day experiences of students from various cultural backgrounds. List several challenges that students in your classes might face as a result of earlier educational inequalities. Also list several ways you may be able help students overcome these challenges. (INTASC Principle 3)
- Research current efforts to close "achievement gaps," differences in school performance related to race and socioeconomic level. Some good places to begin are the U.S. Department of Education web site, AskERIC, and the Minority Student Achievement Network. Based on your research, compile a list of suggestions designed to help teachers of the subject and student ages you hope to teach work more effectively with minority and low-income children. (INTASC Principles 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9)
