In also considering issues of audience, you should also consider the purpose and framework of the portfolio.  Within your own classroom, the portfolio may have a variety of purposes.  For our classroom, the portfolio is intended to reflect your development as a professional educator.  When showing this, it is important to understand that your role in developing the portfolio is not one of an archivist, including every element or artifact of your practice and reflection possible.  Rather, you are more of an editor, sorting through all of the pieces in order to collect the appropriate ones, and assembling them together in a manner cognizant of your reader and that reader's background, and providing any additional framework or background when appropriate.  It should serve to answer the questions posed to you at the beginning of the year: 

• Who am I as a teacher? 
• What is the nature of this community? 
• What are its schools and classrooms like? 
• Who are these students and what does school mean to them? 
• What and how should I teach? 
• How do I know if I am achieving the ends sought? 

Attendance and Seminar Participation: 
In outlining requirements for this "section" of the portfolio, it might be useful to simply say that no "evidence" of attendance is necessary.  It seems as though many students included worksheets, handouts, agendas, etc. to prove that they were in class.  This resulted in a great deal of filler in many portfolios.  You may, however, wish to include notes that you've taken or reflections upon specific seminar sessions or issues we've raised.  Such work would indicate active and thoughtful participation in seminars.  Another means by which you might fulfill the participation element here is a written discussion of your own participation in class.  We encourage you to think critically about your role within the seminar community and reflect upon ways in which you have contributed to and benefited from the group. 

Please note that this section will include something; that something, however, should not just be random filler to demonstrate that you were physically present in class.  We hope and indeed expect that you will go well beyond that. 

Assignments: 
All winter term assignments, including the coursework required to complete Biff's educational psychology seminar, should be included in this section.  If you were asked to rewrite an assignment, please include both the original and the revised paper.  In addition to including the lesson plan you submit in conjunction with your Critical Issues Presentation, you should also include any handouts or reference materials you may have provided to seminar participants.  Finally, this section will include your resume and student evaluation materials. 

Journal Reflections:
As with last semester's portfolio, your journals should reflect a command of the readings and concepts discussed in seminar, as well as reflections on your experience as a developing teacher.  Remember that reflection is not merely stating your opinion, but rather is supporting your ideas with both elements of your experience and theories of learning and teaching.  Finding a balance between research and practice - what we read in seminar and what we do in our classrooms - can be difficult; your journals should be attempts to wed these two areas and to comment upon the place of research and practice in your development as an educator.  Try to get into as much depth as possible with these journal entries; for many of you, this may mean focusing on one specific point that struck you as important or challenging in some way.  Don't worry about "covering it all;" rather, take the time to really explore the multifaceted angles of one or two of the issues our texts and our discussions consider and which really speak to you. 

In reviewing your journals, we are concerned with seeing evidence that your perspective is moving away from that of a student and more toward that of a teacher.  True, you are a student in this seminar, but you are in transition, moving from that student-centered role to that of the teacher.  This shift requires a move away from the rather simplistic assignment-completing focus that many of us adopt as students and toward a broadening of your perspective to include your students, your school culture, and your community.  The journals should not simply demonstrate that you've completed an assignment, but should rather demonstrate that you are a professional individual engaging in the process of constructing a body of professional work. 

Professional Practice and Development:
There are a variety of artifacts you might choose to include in this section.  You might choose to include reflective journals based upon your experience in the classroom (rather than journals which address specific seminar texts).  You might choose to include lesson plans or unit plans and the notes you took after implementing these plans in your classroom.  Consider what worked well and what didn't work so well, what met your expectations and what failed to meet the students' expectations, what you might change in the future and what students' responses to the lesson/unit taught you.  You might choose to include student evaluations and your responses to them.  What did you learn from the lessons your students attempted to teach you in responding to your evaluative questions?  How might your classroom practices reflect or respond to this evaluation process?  In addition to student evaluations, you may wish to include evaluations from your mentor teacher and/or faculty observer.

This section of your portfolio offers a space in which you may demonstrate your growing abilities as curriculum developers and your reflection upon that process.   It may be a space in which you include student work and comment upon that work; how did it "fit" within the lesson or unit you had planned?  How might you respond to that student's work and what sorts of things are you considering in your response? 

Clearly, there are a variety of documents and reflective pieces which you might include in this section of your portfolio.  We have only chosen to list a few of these items here; there are likely numerous other ways in which you might demonstrate your continuing efforts to develop your practices and philosophies as a professional educator.  Additionally, most of the examples we've provided here focus on your own classroom.  You may wish, however, to include materials you've gathered in other classrooms and reflections upon those materials.   Similarly, you may wish to include materials you collected at a professional gathering such as a seminar or a workshop.  Do remember though that these documents are unable to stand on their own.  You must introduce them and provide some context for your readers; share with us your reasoning for including them in your portfolio.  We encourage you to talk with us as you prepare your portfolio and share your ideas about what may best represent your growth over this semester. 

Special Education: 
The formal special education seminar sessions held this semester have been designed to provide you with an introduction to definitions, issues, laws, and various school policies and procedures involving students with special needs.  In addition to the work you will be completing within those seminars, there are several additional areas we would like for you to explore as you consider the ways in which you may work with students whose needs differ in fairly significant ways.  To achieve this, we're providing you with the opportunity to choose activities that will allow you to more critically and closely reflect upon special education and its place in your teaching, in your classroom, and in your school.  Please select three of the following five options: 

• Spend a day shadowing one "special education" student and write a three to five page paper in which you discuss the student's educational needs, the way in which the school may or may not  be meeting those needs, and your individual responses to the experience. 
• Attend an Individual Educational Plan Committee (IEPC) meeting and write a three to five page paper that discusses the process of providing a specialized educational plan for a student with special needs.  Consider the issues involved in providing those services, the needs and desires of the parent, student, and school, and your individual responses to the process. 
• Spend a couple of hours in the "special services room" (note that these facilities have a variety of names in different schools).  Take notes while you are there, ask questions, help out, and try to find out what an "average" day is like in this area.  Write a three to five page paper that focuses on one aspect of your experience. 
• Interview a special education teacher who works solely with students requiring special services.  Talk with this teacher about the daily experiences of working with special needs students, the legal and administrative complications that may accompany such teaching, the resources required  by special needs students, etc.  Your presentation of this interview may focus on one or two of the questions and responses with accompanying reflections or it may take the form of an essay that discusses your conversation and what  you learned; either way, please submit your interview questions along with your final written  summation.  This too should be three to five pages in length. 
• Interview a non-special education teacher who has special needs students in his or her "regular" classroom. Talk with this teacher about the daily experiences of working with special needs students learning within a traditional classroom.  How does the teacher negotiate the student's individualized educational needs?  While we recognize that all students indeed have "individualized educational needs," we are looking at those needs requiring specialized training or significantly more time than may usually be afforded individual students within the confines of the class period. Your presentation of this interview may focus on one or two of the questions and responses with accompanying reflections or it may take the form of an essay that discusses your conversation and what  you learned; either way, please submit your interview questions along with your final written  summation.  This too should be three to five pages in length. 

To synthesize and apply the information you’ve gathered in the Tuesday evening special education sessions, we’d like for you to pose a hypothetical educational situation in which you complete the following steps:

• Identify a special needs student in your classroom and describe his or her learning requirements. 
• Describe the administrative procedures which you would need to perform in order to assist this student if the student were admitted to your class at the beginning of the year as a transfer from another district (assume no prior special education classification before your introduction to the student).
• Share one week of lesson plans for your classroom and describe specifically how you will alter these plans to accommodate the needs of this particular student.  (You do not need to come up with lesson plans above and beyond those you may already be using in your classrooms; feel free to use either something you are working on now or a portion of the unit you completed for your methods course.)  Include notes, annotations, adjustments, etc. that demonstrate the steps you will take to accommodate this student’s specialized learning needs within your classroom.