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. Prepare a list of questions you would like to ask a school administrator in a job interview to help you determine whether you would work well with the administrator. (INTASC Principle 10)
2. This chapter of your textbook suggests that during their preparation programs, many preservice teachers develop an overly positive view of children. Respond to the section of the chapter titled, "Students: Friends or Fiends?" by analyzing your own current views on children. Choose one or more of these questions as a starting point for your analysis, or develop your own.
   • What do you like most about children of the age you hope to teach? What do you like least?
   • Why do you hope to teach children of this age?
   • How much actual experience have you had working with children of this age?
   • Who do you believe is responsible for most discipline problems in the classroom: teachers or students? Why?
   • What do you believe will be the biggest challenges of working with students of this age?
   • What will be the biggest rewards? (INTASC Principle 2)
3. Use the information in this chapter of the textbook and the web links for this chapter as starting points to find advice on how teachers can work effectively with families of their students. Summarize your research, perhaps as a set of guidelines designed for first-year teachers. (INTASC Principle 10)