EDU221WorkingStandardsPortfolio

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Why
In order to be certified as a teacher in Maine, you must demonstrate your proficiency in Maine’s Common Core Teaching Standards. Your final portfolio that will be used for this purpose will be presented at the end of your student teaching experience. In Practicum, you will start a working portfolio. It is intended to be a place where you can collect artifacts throughout your coursework leading up to student teaching that represent your proficiency in each of the standards.

As part of the student teaching application process, you will be asked to do a self-assessment of where you are in meeting the standards. In which standards do you feel confident? In which ones would you like to grow some more? You will be asked to identify artifacts that demonstrate your current level of proficiency, tell which course that artifact is from, and give a rationale as to how that artifact demonstrates your level of proficiency. By starting a working portfolio now and maintaining it throughout your coursework, you will easily be able to complete that portion of the student teaching application process. More importantly, you will be tracking and planning your own professional growth (Standards 10 and 11.5!).

For you to see your progress and growth towards becoming a teacher, you will take a "snapshot" of your portfolio at the end of practicum and submit that to Tk20. When you are applying for student teaching, you will be able to look back at your practicum snapshot of your portfolio and compare it to your then-current portfolio to see how much you've grown/changed/progressed.

Secondary/Middle Education faculty use assessments in Tk20 to see the aggregate progress/development of groups of students to better inform the program and look for areas that are working well and areas that need improvement. Those assessments include lesson plans you create in practicum and then in content methods AND artifacts and rationale statements by you demonstrating how well you know/understand the standards. There are artifacts that the faculty deemed would be appropriate for demonstrating proficiency towards each of the standards, but if you ultimately choose one you feel best demonstrates your proficiency.

What
You will build your Working Standards Portfolio throughout this semester and present it to Beth at your exit interview. Right after your exit interview, you will stop in to see Dr. Theresa. Together, you will create a "Practicum Snapshot" of your portfolio.
 * If you use Google Sites, you will make a copy of your site that says "Last updated on my last day of Practicum" and call it "Practicum Snapshot of My Portfolio." You will upload the URL of the static copy of your site to TK20. Your original "Working Portfolio" is the one that you will continue to add to and update from that point forward.
 * If you use Weebly, you will export an archive of your portfolio and upload that .zip file to TK20. Your original "Working Portfolio" is the one that you will continue to add to and update from that point forward.

You can use the same artifact more than once because ultimately, it's the rationale statement that shows your understanding of and proficiency in the standard. It is very possible that one artifact represents your proficiency in multiple standards.

How
We will use Weebly or Google Sites (the new one!) as the medium for this portfolio for several reasons:
 * If we are all using the same software, we will be better able to help each other
 * The user interface is pretty simple to figure out and provides lots of customization so that this portfolio feels like it represents you
 * It's free and many schools use it so you will become familiar with a tool you might actually use in a school
 * You can easily export an "archive" or zip file of your site so that you can have a "snapshot" and then an on-going working portfolio (the snapshot is like when a parent first draws the line on the wall indicating a child's height on a given date (and putting the date next to the line) so that the next time the parent measure's the child's height, there is a comparison/baseline)

You can choose the format of your portfolio and the theme (colors/graphics/etc.).

You will need a page in your portfolio for 16 standards and 2 lesson plans: 15 Maine Common Core Teaching Standards, 1 UMF Standard, your Practicum Lesson Plan, and your Methods Lesson Plan. Here is [|a simple list of what you need to name each page.]

For each standard, you need to include the following information:
 * Title and number of the standard
 * Name of Artifact
 * Artifact Source (course name, name of conference,...)
 * Name of Instructor Who Originally Evaluated the Artifact (if applicable)
 * Introduction to the Standard
 * Introduction of the Artifact
 * Rationale
 * Artifact

For the lesson plans, you need to include the following information:
 * Name of Artifact
 * Artifact Source (course name and number)
 * Name of Instructor Who Originally Evaluated the Lesson Plan
 * Introduction of the Lesson Plan

Decide on [|a format for your page]s and make them all alike. How do you want your headers and statements to "look"?

UMF Teacher Education Unit has [|a document with more information] on what's expected in each section of the rationale and how you'll be assessed in your progress toward the standard.

Official Description
UMF Teacher Education programs, like the schools you’ll teach in, strive towards quality education for all students and continuous improvement in the ways they carry out that education. One of the many ways we monitor the quality of our education programs is that we periodically ask students to upload an assignment or work sample in Tk20. In addition to the feedback and grade you receive from your professor (in Blackboard, on paper, or in person), these assignments are evaluated in Tk20 using a rubric addressing Maine’s Common Core Teaching Standards. Meeting these standards by the time you graduate from UMF is a requirement for all students in UMF Teacher Education programs; we use these evaluations to track progress towards proficiency over the course of your Teacher Education program. Using these evaluation results, alongside feedback from current students, alumni, and Maine educators, faculty members make changes, as appropriate, to UMF’s Teacher Education programs to ensure the continued high quality of UMF Teacher Education.