My Complete 2011-2012 Teaching Portfolio

Posted on by Stephen Lazar

Here’s the entire portfolio in one shot.  Over on the DOENuts blog, the author really captured the reason I feel this is worthwhile:

As the words from my in-law bounced around my head, this teacher, who has been blogging his teaching portfolio all week  popped into my mind. I know from reading his blog that he’s not looking for a job. In fact, he’s a National Board Certified Teacher. He’s got his credentials and then some. He’s also part of a founding team of a school that is opening in the Fall. Surely he’s got better things to be doing than to be constructing and blogging his teaching portfolio.
Or does he?
Ok follow this: If teaching is the essence of what we do, and learning is the essence of teaching (which it is), and if subjecting your work for public display (for the purpose of, among other things, peer review) is a very important component of learning (which it is. Why else do we have our kids give oral presentations in front of the class?), then why aren’t we all subjecting our work for public display and discussion?
I would only add that reflecting is also an important part of learning, and taking the time to do so has made me a better teacher.  Thank you all, for being the audience that encourages me to do that.

Each of the past two years, I put together a portfolio of my work along with other teachers at Bronx Lab.  I missed that tradition at Young Writers this year, so have decided to take some time to do it on my own before I completely dive into the work of opening Harvest Collegiate.  

The goal of the portfolio is threefold: to document some of the work I did this past year, to take the time to reflect and learn, and to share with the larger community I am lucky to have through this blog.  I will be posting a portfolio entry a day until it’s done.  There are eight entries, one for each year of my career thus far.  Questions, comments, and thoughts are always greatly appreciated, but are even more so for this.

  1. Best Lesson
  2. Best Things I Used from Other Sources
  3. Best Unit
  4. Reflection on Goals
  5. What I Wish I Knew at the Start of the Year
  6. Top 10 Moments from My Year at Young Writers
  7. Reflection on Teacher-Leadership / Outside of School
  8. Using Standards Based Grading in Social Studies
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4 thoughts on “My Complete 2011-2012 Teaching Portfolio”

  1. I am a history teacher at a private boarding school overseas and one of my colleagues in the math department recently got me hooked into finding pedagogy blogs to read (he has a great blog himself), and I just wanted to let you know that I find your site to be a real gem! This summer I am spending a lot of time reflecting on my 3 years of teaching, and so your portfolio posts have been particularly inspiring. I am planning to work on incorporating the SBG into my freshmen world history course next year, and to that end I am considering starting a blog as well because it would be lovely to bounce ideas with more social studies colleagues. But mostly I wanted to say thanks – there’s some really great stuff here! 🙂

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  2. Thanks, Emily, for the kind words. I hope you’ll join me in blogging. Please let me know the address when you start!

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  3. So I’ve actually started up the blog – here it is: http://quaestioethistoria.blogspot.co.uk

    I’m such a newbie at this, but it’s been incredibly fun already. As you’ll see the posts are so far about what I’m planning for next year and hopefully in the fall I can start posting more practical observations. Thanks again for the inspiration and I hope we can share some ideas! 🙂

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  4. An fascinating dialogue is price comment. I believe that you should write more on this matter, it may not be a taboo subject but typically persons are not enough to talk on such topics. To the next. Cheers

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