Section One: Teacher Candidate Introduction

to the Elementary Portfolio Project

Introduction
“Education is the passport to the future, for

tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”.

(Malcolm X, n.d.).

Preparing for this portfolio, I needed to gather all

the materials that best represent me as a teacher. When I

started this program I had an idea of all the things that a

teacher does to educate her students . Now that I am

near the end of my educational journey here at Medaille

College , I know so much more about the education

field and my role as an educator.

In this portfolio the skills that I have acquired at

Medaille will be shown through the artifacts I have

completed. Ever since I was little I have wanted to

become a teacher. I had this one teacher in the third

grade that I admired named Mrs. Herlan. All the students

loved her and spent their lunch and study halls in her

classroom. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up.

Entering Medaille, I kept my motivation going and was

very excited to learn the skills that I would be using as a

teacher in the near future.

Overview and Rationale

This portfolio will showcase some of my best

work while at Medaille College. This portfolio will

include my philosophy of education which is very

important to show my views on how I will contribute to

the field of education. I will also include some on my

best lesson plans and learning segments , which

showcases my understanding of differentiating and

assessing the needs of the children that would be in my

classroom. I will also include my professional

development and workshop certificates. These

professional development classes, provide different

strategies that can be used in the classroom. The

workshops DASA, SAVE, and Child

Abuse and Maltreatment, provide need to know

information about the best way to handle complicated

situations that might happen in the classroom. The

Pechka Kucha PowerPoint

presentation is one of my favorite assignments. It was so

interesting to make a PowerPoint presentation with just

pictures and make a recording explaining each slide.

The work that will be showcase in this portfolio, will be

a reflection of who I am as a teacher. When it comes to

being in the classroom, many things has changed over

the years, such as curriculum. There are many ways to

differentiate the students in your classroom now that

wasn’t as available when I was a student in school many

years ago. Literacy is extremely important when it

comes to instruction, and now there is so much support

to helping students reach their literacy goals. RIT and

AIS, teacher push in or pull out during classroom

reading times to provide that extra reading help to the

students that need it.

Portfolio Development

When putting my thoughts together to start this project,

it took me awhile to decide what I wanted to include in

the portfolio. I looked back on the assignments that I did

my first semester at Medaille College, and compared

them to my second semester and seen the growth in my

assignments that I produced. I took time to look through

everything that I had done throughout the semesters. I

completed lots of planning on what documents to include

and if they would represent what I learned in this

Masters Program. I chose Assessments, workshops,

presentations, and many other artifacts that will be

displayed. These artifacts will come together and create a

good professional portfolio that I can use in the future.

Theories, Theorists and Experts in the Field of

Education

There are many theorist that have influenced me in

during my journey in education. They are; Benjamin

Bloom, Lev Vygotsky, and Geneva Gay. When

referencing most of my lessons I referenced Bloom’s

Taxonomy quite a bit. Benjamin Bloom Benjamin

Bloom was a U.S.

psychiatrist who made several significant contributions

to education, mastery learning, and talent development.

Bloom’s Taxonomy describes major areas in cognitive

domain. The taxonomy begins by defining knowledge as

remembering previously learned material. According to

Bloom, knowledge represents the lowest level of

learning outcomes in the cognitive domain. Knowledge

is followed by comprehension, or the ability to grasp the

meaning of material. This goes just beyond the

knowledge level. Comprehension is the lowest level of

understanding. Application is next , it requires a higher

understanding than comprehension. It refers to how

students apply new principles that they have learned. The

next level is analysis, which deals with the outcomes of

understanding the material. Then there is synthesis

which is the ability to put the parts of what the student

learns together. The last level is evaluation, which is the

ability to judge the material that is learned (Bellis, 2019).

Whether it was doing lesson plans, assessments, or

anytime working with students, I refer to his steps to

assess the students learning. Lev Vygotsky, is another

theorist that I referenced throughout my studies at

Medaille College. His Zone Of Proximal Development

refers to the difference between what a learner can do

without help and what he or she can achieve with

guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.

Vygotsky believed that when a student is in the zone of

proximal development for a particular task, providing the

appropriate assistance will give the student enough a

boost for that student to complete the task. To assist a

person to move throughout the zone of proximal

development, educators are encouraged to focus on three

important components which aid the learning process:

The presence of a student with a higher skill level than

the other child, through social interactions with a skillful

tutor that allow the learner to observe and practice their

skills. Scaffolding, or supportive activities provided by

the educator, or peer that is on a higher skill level, to

support the student as he or she is led through the ZPD

(Mcleod, 2019) I have found this to be true in the

classroom, students that participation in cooperative and

work together to come to the correct solution. Research

shows that students learn best from their peers.

Geneva Gay), Culturally Responsive Teaches to

improve the school performance of underachieving

students of color. African, Asian, Latino, and Native

American students will perform better, on multiple

measures of achievement, when teaching is filtered

through their own cultural experiences and frames of

reference. Culturally responsive teaching include teacher

caring, teacher attitudes and expectations, formal and

informal multicultural curriculum, culturally informed

classroom discourse, and cultural congruity in teaching

and learning strategies. Building relationships with you

students is extremely important. Before you can teach a

student they need to develop trust with you. Teachers

should take the time and learn about the family history of

their students, so they can incorporate that into the

classroom community. Teachers need to make sure that

they’re culturally responsive things posted around the

classroom, such as themes for the bulletin boards,

celebrating the different holidays of the students in your

classroom, and integrating the students culture into the

curriculum. Researchers have found that culturally

responsive classrooms motivate students to learn. "The

essentials of this motivational framework are that it 1),

respect diversity; 2) engages the motivation of a broad

range of students; 3) create a

safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment; 4)

derives teaching practices form across disciplines and

cultures; and 5) promotes equitable learning (Portland

State University website, 2019, ¶ 20). If students feel

safe and have that bond with their teacher they will be

more willing to learn in that classroom environment.

Like I stated before about my favorite teacher Mrs.

Herlan, she had good relationships with all of the

students in the building. Everyone loved her because she

had very strong built in relationships. So many times I

see teachers that don’t try to build that relationship with

their students. They often push students away once they

give them a hard time in class. I personally never wanted

to be one of those teachers and made she I took the time

to get to know every student that was in the classroom

that I was working in.

Conclusion
This portfolio is a reflection of artifacts that showcase

my coursework to becoming a teacher. This portfolio is

something that I will keep with me and update as my

experiences grow in this profession. I am a lifelong

learner, and as my skills improve I will always reflect

back on these artifacts to make sure that I am constantly

doing my best to service my students. In this

introduction I have included what I hope to convey in

this portfolio. I also have included certificates to

workshops and professional development opportunities ,

that showcases the

different strategies that I observed that other teachers use

in their classrooms. This is some of my best work from

the Masters of Science Elementary Education program

here at Medaille
College. There will be a variety of artifacts from this
program that show what I have learned during my time
at Medaille.