If you’re applying for an academic job, you’ll need a teaching portfolio to provide evidence of your teaching effectiveness. What goes into a teaching portfolio? There are usually three realms of documents: ones the teacher produces; ones from peers, students, and institutions; and ones showing student achievement.
Feedback on your teaching portfolio is extremely important, as it helps you imagine what search committee members may be looking for and allows you to see gaps in your teaching reasoning and evidence. The CITL’s learning communities are helpful for working through your drafts. The Talking about Teaching Graduate Student Learning Community (TAT GSLC) focuses on how to translate teaching skills into different products and contexts. Davina, a member of the Navajo Nation and who participated in our TAT GSLC, explained her process of creating a teaching portfolio. While Davina was a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology while participating in the GSLC, she has since started as the Charles Eastman Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College.
L: What was the most valuable aspect from TAT GSLC?
D: The opportunity to receive feedback among friends in a relaxed environment, where one doesn’t have to worry about being “graded” was a plus. The feedback will definitely help my teaching portfolio design. If I hadn’t been a participant in the teaching portfolio workshops and discussion groups, I would have had a harder time composing a teaching portfolio from start to finish, which communicates my teaching experience clearly step by step. Feedback is so IMPORTANT, because you don’t always see how the reader may perceive your teaching portfolio until it is pointed out to you.
L: Did the learning community help you with your teaching or portfolio in any other ways?
D: I often do not receive evaluations after I make presentations in college classrooms. This is something that I want to begin to do more, and that’s what I learned–that I could use evaluations from students/professors in the classes in which I am a guest speaker, not only for bettering my lessons/presentations, but also to include in my teaching portfolio.
Are you in the process of creating a teaching portfolio like Davina? We’ll be running our TAT GSLC in Fall 2017, and we will make a teaching portfolio and more! Our short application is due on Friday, September 1st at 5:00 PM and can be found here. Have a friend who will be applying for jobs in the fall? Share this post with your friend and consider attending a CITL workshop or contact our office for an individual consultation!
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