Portfolio Tips and Advice
Easily the most difficult part of preparing a portfolio (according to the participants in this session) was knowing how best to balance the information. You should provide some thoughtful notion of your teaching philosophy, some history of your teaching, and some details on courses you are prepared to teach that sound exciting and show what you can bring to the school. But at the same time the teaching portfolio should be kept short and concise. The teaching philosophy in particular is difficult and may take several revisions. It's hard to discuss in general terms your views on teaching in a short statement. The following are some tips and heuristics for preparing your portfolio. Of course, there are no solid answers, so seek the advice of your advisors as you prepare your portfolio.
- Here's a rough guideline of what goes in a teaching portfolio:
- A statement of teaching philosophy (heavily encouraged but technically optional; in general not to exceed one page)
- A summary of teaching experience (short summary of TAing, provide some evidence of excellence in teaching, including some evaluation materials)
- Lists of courses that would like to teach, with some description of material covered, materials used, and evaluation procedure, and also possibly some sample syllabi (though no more than a couple)
- Any single component of your teaching portfolio should be only
around 1-2 pages. In general you do not want the teaching materials
to add up to too many pages of your overall application, since by and
large your research materials tend to weigh more in job decisions.
- It's important to say in the portfolio what you've done as a
teacher, but perhaps even more important to say what you think you can
do in the future.
- List all the classes you can conceivably teach. Don't say that
you'll teach anything, of course, but also don't be too narrow.
- Your list of proposed courses should also recognize the nature of
the school or program you are applying to (e.g. not too many seminars
if the focus is primarily on undergraduate teaching).
- Be sure to emphasize the value you bring the department,
i.e. what extra resources you bring that they might want or need,
fresh outlooks, new directions. Try to convey (in a non-threatening
way) the information "if you had me in your department, here are the
courses you could offer that you can't/don't offer now."
- You should also include some summary or aspect of your teaching
evaluations:
- Include at least the one page summary from each course you taught (the top sheet that comes with the evaluations Stanford provides).
- Possibly include individual comments from students, either typed up or photocopies of the actual evaluations (note that some schools require this, so check the job ad and if they want it, send everything in).
- If you include student comments, it is best to include all comments (stating that you have done so), rather than including only the good stuff. Otherwise you may find yourself in an awkward position of looking like you're hiding something.
- If your letter writers are professors you TAed for, you might ask them to send in their end-of-course evaluation.
- Your teaching philosophy statement is something to be careful
with. A good philosophy statement can make you stand out, but a bad
one can come over quite poorly. The absence of a specific of
"teaching philosophy" is not necessarily a negative, provided you have
plenty of discussion of your teaching experience and proposed courses
that conveys the same information.
- It helps in preparing a philosophy statement to put yourself in
the shoes of the student (which you have some experience of from
undergraduate and graduate school). Some questions to ask yourself in
preparing a philosophy statement:
- What kind of teacher am I?
- What are my values when it comes to teaching?
- What would I like in general for students to get out of one of my classes?
- Is there something fresh I think I can bring to teaching?
Having one or two very key points that define your approach to teaching is about as much as you can convey in a page.
- You may not use all of your materials in all of the applications
you send out. The idea is to at least partly specialize your
materials for the place you are applying to. In this vein, you can
also suggest connections to things the department you are applying to
does or specializes in, and also connections to people
(e.g. co-teaching possibilities).
- It's also a good idea to prepare more syllabi than you send to a
particular school, to use when interviewing and to send to other
schools.
- Finally, the portfolio should look good and convey the seriousness with which you take teaching. Cosmetics is important. Conversely, don't overdo it. There's no need to send a separate, bound folder with a glossy cover and color diagrams (although this may be appropriate for other fields and other departments). The package should be clean, simple, and professional and look like you put quite a bit of thought into it.