It's important at all times to keep a record of your teaching experience. Keeping copies of syllabi, tests, assignments, student work, etc., will not only mean you don't have to recreate these things next time, but it could help you avoid some problems down the road.

For teaching assistants who may some day be looking for a regular teaching job, keeping a teaching portfolio is a good idea. A teaching portfolio is similar to an artist's portfolio: it is a material record of things you create in practicing your profession. It contains both primary material (documents produced in the course of teaching) and secondary material (documents produced in reflection upon teaching).

Why Create a Portfolio?

Creating portfolios allows teachers to think seriously about their teaching goals and strategies, and to present those thoughts to others. Portfolios for graduate teaching assistants generally have two major goals: your development as a college-level teacher, and your employment as a faculty member.

Self-Development Through Reflection

Creating a reflective portfolio allows you to ask sensible questions about your methods, goals, expectations, etc. Reflecting on these things allows you to develop your courses further, to figure out and fix mistakes, to better connect your teaching interests with your research interests, and to provide some structure for conversations about teaching among your peers and mentors. A collection of teaching artifacts and relevant reflections shows the connections between your intentions, strategies, and success as a teacher.

Self-Promotion in Employment

A teaching portfolio demonstrates teaching achievements in an organized and convincing way. Therefore, portfolios are used increasingly by institutions of higher learning as a basis for hiring decisions. Demonstrating that you take a thoughtful approach to teaching can make the difference on the job market. It is second nature for advanced graduate students to document their articles, conference papers, and research awards on a C.V. With only slight changes in your regular pattern of documentation, it will become second nature to document your teaching and reflections on teaching as well.

What Goes into a Portfolio?

Each portfolio is unique; the content varies from discipline to discipline and person to person, and changes over time. There are common elements, however. Most portfolio entries are reflective, whether they reflect on the primary documents of teaching or reflect on larger concerns. A number of options for entries in your portfolio are presented below.

How to Begin a Portfolio

A teaching portfolio should be kept in a loose-leaf binder for flexibility. Teaching is dynamic, and reflection on teaching makes it even more dynamic. So you can expect your portfolio to grow and change over time. Moreover, you'll want to be able to take your portfolio apart and put it together in different configurations for jobs, grants, or awards you might apply for. For your own purposes, consider keeping a table of contents, and be sure to provide one whenever you submit your portfolio with an application. Some job applications call for specific primary documents such as a sample set of evaluations and letters of recommendation. You might want to ask a faculty mentor or advisor for letters.

Ideas for Entries

Teaching Materials Paired with Reflections

• A syllabus you've used; reflection on what your goals were, how well the syllabus worked, and changes you might make;
• Student evaluations represented graphically or quantitatively; reflection suggesting how you might use this data to support your improvement;
• Class material you created; reflection as to why you produced it, how well it worked toward your goals, how you might change it or why retain it;
• A journal of your teaching or someone else's teaching in a particular class; reflection on your own journal, each other's journals, or a dialogue between the two of you about what you see in these journals;
• Descriptive information about a specific context in which you worked: courses taught, class sizes and attributes, the institution's expectations, your expectations; reflection on how your teaching took these things into account and what you think of the results;
• Information about your wider involvement in teacher development such as other programs in which you've participated, teaching materials you've developed, involvement in curriculum development; reflection on why you chose to do these particular things, what you got from them, and how you might apply them.

2-3 page Autobiographical Statements

• Inquire into, diagnose, make sense of, and actively experiment with the toughest aspects of your teaching experience.
• Explain how teaching has affected you. How have you responded in different teaching contexts? What has interested and motivated you about teaching? What challenges and rewards have you found or do you anticipate finding in teaching?
• Describe and assess your learning style: what is your own process, what makes you succeed or fail as a learner?
• Sketch your competence as a scholar teaching in a particular content area: how do you connect scholarship and teaching?

Philosophy of Teaching

Discuss your ideas about teaching: your beliefs about good teaching, how you have tried to accomplish your objectives, how they have changed, and how good you are by these criteria. This is perhaps the one item which is universally expected in a teaching portfolio.

Creating a Philosophy of Teaching Statement

How readily can you explain your approach to teaching? How congruent is your philosophy of teaching to your practice of teaching? In what ways are you currently working toward new goals in your teaching practice?

To begin drafting a statement of teaching philosophy, try jotting down some ideas (or write a brief statement) about your teaching ideas. What goals, behaviors, strategies, and processes do you think are most important for you, as a teacher, to consider when creating and implementing a course? How are these things apparent in your teaching actions?

Choose or Develop a Model that will Work for You

Your Teaching in General

A loose-leaf model. It includes documents, reflections, letters (solicited & unsolicited), courses (comprehensive: syllabus, lecture notes, materials, student ratings), student work, etc. You choose different pieces of it to include for each particular application (i.e., each job you apply for and investigate prior to applying). Everything must be labelled, and should be divided with tabs.

Development Portfolio

A 6-8 page narrative (with empirical evidence in appendix) in which you show change over time in a particular content area or philosophical approach.

Issue-Based Portfolio

An in-depth exploration of one aspect of your teaching (e.g., integrating multiculturalism into your curriculum; developing a capstone course for majors in your discipline; your various uses of writing, formal & informal, in all of your teacherly activities; etc.). It might include the same variety of materials as Model I but is focused on this one issue.

What Goes in a Portfolio?

• Table of contents
• Philosophy of teaching (2 pages)
• Professional biography (brief narrative highlighting key developmental stages and the campus or department contexts in which you have been operating)
• Course planning & preparation: work samples (syllabi; series of assignments; lecture notes; maps) with reflections & rationale.
• Actual teaching: work samples (video; notes from observation; solicited student journals) with reflections & rationale.
• Evaluating student learning & providing feedback: work samples (drafts & revised drafts by one student over time, with your comments on them; collection of student papers for same assignment; "happiness ratings"; one- minute papers by students about single issue) with reflections & rationale.
• Keeping up with the field in areas related to teaching performance: documents (conference paper you heard and will incorporate into your work; agenda from a conference or workshop you participated in; letters soliciting your joining committees or boards) with reflections & rationale.