The Portfolio Group

Recently, CEEE, the center I work for at Rice University, hosted a group of educators from Great Britain who were interested in finding out more about the American educational system and how it works. I knew I needed to give a presentation to them in the morning, but they were all science teachers, which is not my field, so I was at a loss for a while, trying to decide on a topic.

I noticed in their bios that most of them were interested in professional development, so I settled on a presentation about the self-generated professional development system we developed at the middle school I taught at before I began working at Rice.

Ron and I were asked to present this past weekend on Visual Literacy. Last year in one of my university classes; I developed, along with the rest of my group, a PowerPoint presentation on the various kinds of literacy. During the research for this class assignment, I began the development of my case study and the beginnings of my current research in visual literacy. This work lead to the first year's findings that were presented at the annual American Educational Research Association Conference in Montreal.

Photo from American Educational Research Association Presentation.

After that presentation, a new opportunity occcured which was local. The regional school reform funding organization was sponsoring a workshop on literacy and the work that Ron and I are doing fits right into the workshop. See Ron's blog entry.

Ron and I are planning on continuing the work and integrating more of the four big content areas into the visual arts curriculum. The big change I have seen in my practice over the past years has been no longer am I just adding on English, writing, and math to my art lessons; I am incorporating the objectives into my student's artwork.

I was excited to have had the opportunity to present at the Visual Literacy Workshop at the University of Houston on Saturday, May 14, 2005. The presentation focused on Literacy and the Visual Arts concentrating on special populations in our classrooms. The response from people attending the workshop was only positive.

I had the opportunity to hear and meet with the Key Note speaker who just so happens to work in the same district as I do. It was the first time we meet. She was great and I was so motivated by her lecture and her book
Unplugged. See Michaelann's blog entry.

Last week at the Fondren Reforming Schools Summer Institute, Mari and Ron made a presentation based on the portfolio work for the past 7 years.

Mari works with participants building their own narratives.

Ron working hard to make sure the 3 hours was as fun as informative.

A number of attendees found the investigation of both qualitative and quantitative to be the best way to create a well-rounded picture of their schools.

Taking a time to reflect during the hectic school year is not always easy.

Mari and I gave a presentation this past Tuesday to the High School Network, a regional collaborative grant project. The presentation went well but the key to a good presentation is remembering your audience. Some of the information, I think, was a little too much for beginners. Seeing our year three portfolio was too much and became overwhelming. The agenda we used is below.

Portfolio Presentation
September 13, 2005
Mari and Michaelann
High School, A. ISD

Agenda
Introductions
Our history with portfolios and portfolio making
� Improve or Prove
� Theory + Collaboration + Reflection -> Better Teachers -> Better Students
Evidence of..... Mission Statement Activity
� What is evidence? Reference: The article from HORACE on Common and Uncommon Measures (p. 5 & 6)
� Each group will present their findings in a T-chart
Descriptive Review of School Finder Information
� Descriptive Review Protocol
Ideas for building common vision leading to "buy-in"
� Goal setting protocol
Organizing a team
� Compass point activity
Narratives
� Narratives, Chronicles and Annals
Templates
� Samples
Question and Answers

According to the sponsor of the presentation, "Thanks again to both you for sharing your experience and expertise!"

Download file

The presentation this past Saturday at the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum in Austin, Texas went well. Michael opened the presentation with an overview of the group's history and philosophy of the work. He then discussed the gender equity and technology. Ron then discussed the cultural biases present in education and dealing with educating teachers to these competing values in our society. I (Michaelann) then presented information on creating an equitable learning environment for second language learners and special education students. The audience's questions were right on target and made for a perfect ending to a good presentation. As Ron said, "the team brought their �A' game on Saturday." I would be interested in comments from audience members, presenters, or/and portfolio members. Also, Michael it would be great if you could upload some pictures from the presentation and attach the url to see the powerpoint.

The powerpoint presentation file from AATC is quite large. Here is a link to it on the university server. (this is a temporary placement)

http://ceee.rice.edu/temp/

I read the letter from AERA and I was disappointed and then after sleeping on it I decided maybe this was a great opportunity for our group to do some reflecting on direction, vision, and goals. I would like to get input from the group, but I was thinking maybe at our meeting next Wednesday we could look at the reviewers' comments and see how that can inform our work for this year.

Your thoughts????

Excerpt from the letter
It is with sincere regret that I must inform you that your submission
entitled "A Long View of Teachers' Experiences in a Comprehensive School
Reform Movement" was not accepted for presentation at the 2006 Annual
Meeting. We typically have an acceptance rate below 50% and we again
had a large number of exceptionally high quality submissions this year,
competing for fewer program slots than we had last year. Therefore
some paper and symposia that might have been accepted in prior years did
not make it into the program this year. Your proposal was sent to at
least two reviewers. Comments and recommendations made by the reviewers
will be available on line for your review by Nov. 10th.

Please note that copies of all program related email correspondence is
available online in the "message center." This link is available below
the "track proposal" link found on the main menu page of the All
Academic system.

I encourage you to seek outlets for the work you submitted and continue
to submit to AERA in the future.

Sincerely,

Co-Program Chairs, SIG Portfolios and Reflection in Teaching and
Teacher Education

Please post any questions in the comments section and someone from the group will respond.

Tim - presented at the NSRF research conference today and did a fabulous job. He was insightful and fielded the questions with great ease.

He recorded the session so we can talk about the comments, suggestions and maybe some next steps in our work together.

As soon as I have time to reflect on my notes, I will post some in-depth comments.

Mapping the Journey of Collaborative Reflective Practices through Traveling Journals

Abstract
In the proposed paper, we share the development and evolution of several teacher researchers as individuals and as an organized teacher research group involved in a local national reform movement. Since 1998, we have created school portfolios, have participated in Critical Friends Groups (often simultaneously), and most recently, have engaged in a funded teacher research project in which we experimented with traveling journals as inquiry tools and forms of documentation to assist us in our individual and collective “move[ment] toward improved…reflective practice” (Schwab, 1958). This paper, which is methodological as well as substantive in nature, outlines what traveling journals are, and the ways in which our traveling reflections and discussions impacted our thinking, teaching, scholarship, and shared portfolio work.

The paper is complete and uploaded for the discussant and we are all off to NYC.

Today was the presentation and it was a full house. The room was spilling out to the hall and over 10 people were sitting on the floor. Paul, Donna, and myself did an excellent job representing the hard work of the group. The concept, content and context of the collaboration, reflection and documentation was really appreciated and valued.

Paul did a great job with the research theory that grounded the work. Donna did a great job of teasing out the limitations and discoveries of the collaborative work (plus the powerpoint). And of course I did a great job (haha) highlighting the three emergent themes in the current work.

I believe we could write more from the journals.

More on AERA later - Thanks everyone for all the hard work and wish everyone could be here.