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The Teacher Effectiveness Portfolio (TEP) provides students with a vehicle to demonstrate their teaching competencies both over time and in summary related to the skills, knowledge, and dispositions necessary for successful entry into the teaching profession. In an integrated format, teacher candidates will review and reflect upon their growth and achievement relative to their work and experiences, while grounding their reflection in the Florida Educator Accomplished Practices (FEAPs).
The portfolio is therefore a capstone project that presents artifacts that support your competence to teach as measured against the FEAPs. The Portfolio allows you to present your thinking about the FEAPs in an integrated way. Each work product you select for your portfolio will document your expertise in one or more FEAPs. Thus, taken together, the work products contained in your portfolio will allow you to document your competence across the 12 FEAPs that guide teacher preparation in Florida.
A second purpose of this portfolio is to document your growth over time. You will begin saving work products (artifacts) and writing reflections/justifications in your classes. As you save this work, you will see patterns of competence emerge and find areas where you need to further build competence. You will not become competent through one project or assignment that supports a group of FEAPs. However, as you gain more content and experience through additional projects, your knowledge and confidence will grow as you reflect upon your growing competency in the practice of the FEAPs. Showing competence through multiple artifacts assures the College of Education, parents, school districts, and the state of Florida that you are truly "Learners and Leaders of Today and Tomorrow." Your portfolio will demonstrate to these stakeholders that you are not only "safe to practice" but also competent as a beginning educator.
It is very important to remember that your Teacher Effectiveness Portfolio is a graduation requirement for the College of Education at FGCU. If you are unable to meet the "Proficient" performance level on all portfolio criteria, you will not graduate regardless of your past course performance or your overall or program GPA.
The Florida Department of Education introduced the FEAPs in 1996. These standards are widely recognized to provide a common vision necessary to ensure the compatibility of approaches taken to improve student achievement. The FEAP standards and related indicators articulate a model of teacher knowledge and skill needed in the classroom and a view what constitutes excellence in teaching. The FEAPs ensure consistency and compatibility to promote learning and to provide direction in the career development of a teacher. The FEAP standards recognize the relationship between a strong foundation of content and pedagogical knowledge and the ability to apply this knowledge in practice while exhibiting professional behaviors.
All certified educators in the state of Florida are assessed against the FEAPs. Professionally, the FEAPs are the benchmarks against which your effectiveness in the classroom will be evaluated beginning with your course work at FGCU, through your final teacher candidateship before graduation, to your annual performance assessments by your school administrators. By completing your TEP you will have a beginning point in demonstrating your competence, and an understanding of what the FEAPs encompass for a beginning teacher.
The TEP is the vehicle you will use to document your growth and competence in meeting the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to become a professional educator. Your TEP will be a showcase for all you have learned and the work you have done that has impacted student learning in your field experiences and teacher candidateships. This Portfolio is not something that you complete at the end of your program of study; it is something that you work on during every block of courses. As you complete assignments in your College of Education courses and reflect on how those assignments demonstrate your growing competence in meeting the FEAPs, you will save those assignments and benchmark assignments accompanied with reflection/justifications in your Work Folio (WF) stored in LiveText. These artifacts will be tracked on your Work Folio Matrix to help you and your faculty mentor assess your growth across all of the FEAPs.
During Block 5, you will begin to move artifacts from your Work Folio to your TEP. You are encouraged to add artifacts from your final teacher candidateship internship and some from your Block 4 internship as well to demonstrate the impact of your teaching on students' learning. You are not required to write reflections on the FEAPs for the artifacts that are not benchmark assignments.ix.
The group of artifacts you choose for your TEP must show your competence across all of the FEAPs. Generally, artifacts chosen for inclusion should be significant assignments and projects (e.g., benchmark assignments) that have enough depth to address more than one FEAP. Artifacts that address three or four FEAPs are considered sufficient in depth. The breadth of artifacts chosen and the depth to which they support your FEAP competence drives your portfolio selections. AT LEAST HALF OF YOUR ARTIFACTS MUST BE UNITS, LESSONS, PROJECTS, ETC. THAT YOU HAVE DONE WITH STUDENTS AND SHOW AN IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING.
Finally, you will write a Summary Essay that discusses your growth as an educator in relation to the FEAPs. In addition, this essay should have a strong emphasis on student learning and how you facilitate that as a teacher.
Students may submit their TEP in either hard copy or electronic copy. However, ALL students must submit their Summary Essay in LiveText. Students submitting a hard copy portfolio will also provide a hard copy of the Summary Essay in their binder.
Your Teacher Effectiveness Portfolio will contain the following:
Hard Copy Portfolios - Please include your name on the front cover AND on the spine of the binder.
During Professional Studies you will discuss how to write a professional resume. It is recommended that you update your resume each semester to include field experiences, service learning work, and work experience. You should bring your resume to your Faculty Mentor meetings to discuss with your mentor. During Block 5, your resume should be up-to-date and include your teacher candidateship experiences from both Blocks 4 & 5.
In Block 1 you will begin to develop your Philosophy of Education. Over time, your philosophy will mature and change. During your Block 4 teacher candidateship, you will revisit and probably re-write your philosophy of education. Before including your philosophy in your Teacher Effectiveness Portfolio, you may need to revise it (again ) based on feedback from your Block 4 University Supervisor. If written in essay form, it should be 1-2 pages long. Guidelines for writing your philosophy can be found on the COE teacher candidateship website under the Block 4 section.
This matrix is very similar to your Work Folio matrix. However, the TEP Matrix lists only the artifacts that you are including in your TEP. Choose artifacts that are "rich" in that they demonstrate your competence in more than one FEAP. Your matrix should contain 6-12 artifacts Each FEAP in the matrix must be addressed a minimum of three times. Final teacher candidateship artifacts are encouraged. The benchmark assignments may or may not be followed by the reflection. At least half of the artifacts must have been implemented with students. The artifacts that were implemented with students are to be starred (*) in the Matrix.
As mentioned above in (iii), artifacts are simply significant examples of your work during your preparation program, tied to FEAPs. The artifacts listed in your TEP matrix are included in your portfolio.
The Summary Essay will be between 2500 and 3000 words.
Your summary is your opportunity to reflect about your overall growth as an educator and demonstrate how you have mastered the FEAPs. It should be thoughtful in tone and written in the first person.
It is expected that you will relate your thoughts to theories and concepts you learned along the way in your courses and field experiences. These theories and concepts must be cited using APA style and references are to be listed in the reference section of your portfolio.
Below are questions to guide you in writing your summary essay. However, they are not meant to be an outline for your summary essay. Just be sure that you weave the information into your essay:
Your professional development plan should include goals and activities for your personal development as a teaching professional that are supported by your artifacts/reflections and your summary essay. For instance, if you discussed how you grew more confident in your use of technology by including PowerPoint in your lessons, webquest assignments, and websites for teachers, an appropriate professional development goal and activities might be:
FEAP: Technology
Your goals should be realistic and achievable for a first year teacher. For instance, it's realistic to apply to graduate school and begin taking courses, but not realistic to complete a master's degree in two semesters!
Select 3 or 4 goals based on 3 or 4 FEAPs on which you would like to work. For each goal, develop 3 or 4 activities that will help you achieve the goal. This professional development plan could easily become your first year plan required of first year teachers by virtually all Florida school districts.
You have been exposed to many theories and researchers who support what you will believe or come to believe about education as you move through your program of study. Even though your reflections and conclusion are written in your voice, citing authorities may be appropriate at times to support what you say.
Citations in your portfolio may either be direct quotes or paraphrases of the author's thoughts. All citation sources are included in the list of references. Citations and references are to be written in APA style. Please follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition.
During Senior Seminar you will be given the rubric that will be used to evaluate your portfolio. Use it to self-evaluate your portfolio before you submit it for evaluation.
Completed portfolios are due following your final teacher candidateship so that they can be evaluated before graduation certifications are due. Senior Seminar Faculty will evaluate your portfolio.
You must attain a "Proficient" rating on each area of portfolio assessment in order to graduate. Students who receive "Developing" on any area (criterion) will have the opportunity to revise those sections for re-assessment. Portfolios scored as "Beginning" on any dimension of the rubric are considered significantly below standard and the possibility of appropriate revision in time for graduation is likely unrealistic.
As mentioned earlier, Senior Seminar faculty will support you as you compile your artifacts and benchmark reflections in your TEP. Additionally, Senior Seminar faculty will support you as you write your Summary Essay and Professional Development Plan.
| Artifacts | FEAP 1 | FEAP 2 | FEAP 3 | FEAP 4 | FEAP 5 | FEAP 6 | FEAP 7 | FEAP 8 | FEAP 9 | FEAP 10 | FEAP 11 | FEAP 12 |
| Action Research | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| Reading Case Study | X | X | X | |||||||||
| * ESOL case Study | X | X | X | |||||||||
| Social Studies Unit | X | X | X |
* Artifact implemented with students
From this matrix, you will build your Teacher Effectiveness Portfolio Matrix during Block 5. The Teacher Effectiveness Portfolio Matrix is included in your Portfolio and only contains the artifacts presented in your portfolio.