Dear Reader,
I am not a teacher of secondary English. I aspire to be, but I am not quite there yet. As a child, between my phases of wanting to be Mariah Carey, a magician, or Nancy Kerrigan, I always returned to the idea of wanting to teach. I began my undergraduate studies as an English major with a secondary education minor, but quickly dropped that minor when I started taking art classes, studied in London and Paris, and the starving artist in the European loft-apartment lifestyle became so much more appealing to me. Then I graduated into a crumbling economy with degrees in English and studio arts and did the most cliché thing I could have done with my life: I took a job at Starbucks.
While I was busy serving triple grande, 3-pump, nonfat, no-whip, 140-degree pumpkin spice lattes, I was also lucky enough to take a job as the assistant softball coach at Wellesley College. I had played softball my entire life but I found new joys being a coach as opposed to a player. At Wellesley, I also realized how much I loved being in the world of academia and began to reconsider a career path in education. Life as a barista was not for me.
Coaching was one of my first experiences in teaching. Essentially, coaching is teaching. So much of what I have learned as a coach will carry from the field into my classroom. I have learned about organization, motivation, teamwork, kinesthetic learning, discipline, and the importance of practice and individualized instruction. I hope to be able to motivate my students to “win” in and out of the classroom.
So why have I chosen English over coaching softball or teaching another subject matter? Simply, reading and writing are things that I love to do. I was an avid reader as a child. At the age of two, relatives and friends of the family thought that I could read already because I had memorized Dr. Suess’ Green Eggs and Ham – including the page turns! At the age of ten, I was writing short stories and submitting them to “American Girl” magazine in hopes of publication. My undergraduate artwork was all about the inevitable connection between writing and art. I believe that you should not teach something to others unless you love it yourself.
I also believe in the importance of English Language Arts. I want to be able to help students to be good readers, writers, speakers, and critical thinkers so that they may experience future success. I want to make English accessible for my students inside the classroom, and I want them to see the need for and the prevalence of English outside of the classroom. Essentially I will need to teach and assess my students, but I want to do so by defying conventionality, and by gaining their trust and respect.
I want to use various methods and teaching approaches in my classroom by incorporating different styles of lessons and ensuring that my classroom is dynamic rather than static. I want to be able to run writing workshops, bring guest speakers into the classroom, and take students on field trips to reinforce what they are learning. I want to be able to incorporate media into my lessons and strive to stay technologically savvy to understand the resources and tools that my student will have available to them. I want to offer opportunities for my students to publish their writing or to write for outside sources like the local newspaper or a poetry slam. I want to nurture creativity.
A student-centered classroom is the best way to ensure that I am adapting to my students needs. I will need to constantly assess myself as I assess my students, because I believe that students will learn more in an environment where their input directly influences the curriculum and its assessment. On-going formative assessments, choice-based summative assessments and student-created rubrics will help to incorporate my students’ values into their work. I also need to allow writers to progress. This means allowing multiple drafts of writing and offering teacher and peer feedback. I want my students to feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing a piece that has undergone extensive revision.
I set goals for myself in the classroom, but I see myself having a big role outside of the classroom as well. I want to coach, advise clubs, and take a genuine interest in finding out who my students really are. I see the need for developing the student as a whole and see the need for a more collegiate approach to education in high schools. Ultimately I would love to move into an administrative role where I can make decisions that impact a whole school system, district or state, but it will be my experiences as a classroom teacher, as a role model and advisor to students, my experiences “in the trenches” that will guide my career path and show me where change needs to me made. I will be a teacher for a while, but I consider myself a lifelong learner, and I want to create classrooms and systems that breed lifelong learners.
This portfolio serves to show what has inspired me to teach secondary English, what I have learned about myself as a student and a teacher, and what tools I have acquired that will help my educational endeavors. I think that this collection demonstrates my teaching style and sense of humor, and reflects on what my graduate studies have taught me to this point. This portfolio will be added to as I begin my career, but I hope that I can always look to it as a reminder of my core beliefs about teaching and the influences that drove me into this profession.
Sincerely,
Student name omitted
EXHIBITS
Softball Bag
I have used my softball bag to house my portfolio exhibits, because I believe that it is because of my coaching that I rediscovered my desire to teach. I also gained a lot of confidence when I became a college softball coach. I was expected to be an authority figure to girls only a year or two younger than I was. Finally, I believe that as a teacher, I will do a lot more than teach. I want to continue coaching softball and find other ways to become involved with my students extracurricularly. I have always had such rich student-life experiences that I want to be able to offer this to my high school students.
Softball Bat
I have included my softball bat because I will keep it in my classroom to discipline misbehaving students with!
Ok, I am not really going to strike my students with a softball bat, but I do see the bat as a metaphor for strict discipline in my classroom. I cannot afford to tolerate bad behavior. This semester, I have learned that issuing fairly steep consequences early in the year can set a tone about my expectations and ensure better behavior.
Watch and Softball Practice Plan
When I began working for head softball coach Keri O’Meara at Wellesley last year, I had never worn a watch in my entire life. I very quickly purchased one, and learned the importance of time management and efficiency. Keri is probably the most organized person that I know, and this is reflected in her practice planning. We planned practices at least one week in advance to maintain the scope of the goals that we had for the team and to be prepared. Practices were planned down to the minute.
Keri’s example in organization will help me in future lesson planning. I know that at times I will have to make adjustments to my plans, but I want to always be prepared and try to have a good sense of how long certain activities will take. I know that this knowledge will come with time and experience, but I understand the importance of efficiency. I do not want to have wasted time with my students – especially in districts where classes might only be 45 minutes long.
Mind Gym
The last exhibit that I will include that is softball-related is my copy of Gary Mack’s Mind Gym. This is a book about sports psychology that teaches many lessons that I will be able to incorporate in my classroom. When it comes to motivating my students, I can adapt some of these concepts for my students. For example, I want to train my students in positive self-talk. People often speak to themselves in the negative using the word “don’t.” By telling themselves the thing they do want to do, students have a better chance at achieving success. As a teacher, I can strive to speak to my students this way.
Nancie Atwell’s In the Middle
While our class has expressed much skepticism and has been very critical toward Nancie Atwell, I wanted to include her text because although I too tend to doubt the possibility of using many of her strategies in my classroom, Atwell’s book reminds me of the idealism and optimism that I feel as a pre-service teacher. Because none of my ideas have ever failed, I am feeling excited about using them and about trying new, innovative things in the classroom. I want a well-executed writing workshop and to allow my students to occasionally select what they read. Certainly Nancie Atwell is working in an ideal situation and a self-created school system, but I cannot just presume that her concepts are impossible to employ.
Class Lesson Plans
I have included the plans from everyone’s lessons this semester. I believe that as a teacher you need to borrow and share lessons to find new ideas to try. Because I am not currently teaching, I have not written many lesson plans of my own, so these plans serve to help me format my lessons, and give me some great ideas to try and adapt in the future.
Candy
Sometimes high school students need to be bribed.
Raskolnikov on Trial
This is a lesson that my AP English teacher used my senior year in high school. I included this lesson because one, I was very positively influenced by this teacher and two, this was a powerful lesson that I still remember. Ms. Smith was able to bring Crime and Punishment to life. I also now know that this lesson was very student-centered and geared toward Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory by allowing us as students to decide how we felt about the story’s main character. As a teacher, I want to encourage individual reader responses as opposed to an artifact approach to literature. Students will value a text more if they can imbue it with their own, fit meaning.
Examples of Rubrics
In terms of assessment, I want to use rubrics as often as possible to grade my students. In accordance with the Massachusetts state frameworks, I often want these rubrics to be student-generated. Again, like my beliefs about the reader-response theory, I feel that students will strive for higher achievement when they have set their own bars and benchmarks. By helping to decide how they will be assessed, students often see their assignments in a new light and find importance in what they are producing. I also have learned the importance of offering choices for students of how they will show evidence of their knowledge. There is a great need for differentiation in assessment. A paper, or a test is not always the best way for every student to prove what they know about a topic. I want to provide my students with assessment options so that they may choose what they are most comfortable with.
Barbara Estrin Response
This is a response I received from my first college English professor – Babara Estrin. This is an important exhibit to me for several reasons. First, Professor Estrin was the one who told me, “If you want to teach English, there is no need to waste time in your undergraduate studies with education courses. There are plenty of other ways to get certified – take as many English courses as you can, or find another passion to double major or minor in.” I took this advice. Had I not, I would have never discovered my passion for art.
This response is also important to me because I want be able to communicate with my students this well. Professor Estrin responded to every piece of writing, every draft, with a personal, guiding letter. This response in particular gave me a certain confidence that I needed as a young college writer. I want to boost my students confidence whenever possible. Also, by pointing out what they do well, they will see that I have faith in their work and will more easily digest my constructive criticism.
History of a Piece
I have included this assignment from Dr. Jay Simmons’ “Teaching Writing” course. In this assignment, I was asked to work on piece over the course of an extended time period – making revisions and getting teacher and peer feedback. After reaching a final draft, the assignment calls for the creation of a reflection on the writing process. In my reflection I talked about how I started the piece, when I made changes, how I got feedback, etc.
This would be a great assignment to modify and use with high school students because it reveals so much about the writing process and would help students learn about who they are as writers – what helps them and how they work best.
Poems Generated from my Lesson
These were found poems created by students in our “Teaching English” course during the lesson that I taught. They provide great examples of creative student work that was produced during a fun assignment. My classmates produced some great work and I learned about not stifling creativity.
Bohmer’s Time for Meaning & Gere’s Language and Reflection
These texts have been very accessible for me and will help me to keep up with teaching methods and strategies.
“The Tortoise”
This was my high school’s literary magazine. I published a short story in it, and I have included it to stress the importance of publication – even if just in a high school magazine or by creating a class magazine.
English Major Flyer
This was a flyer handed out to English majors at Stonehill College. I want to revamp it and include it in my classroom to inform my students about jobs available for people who study English.