This year is my third official year of teaching,* which means that it's time to not only renew, but I also need to upgrade to a Level 2 license. In order to do that, I have to create a teaching portfolio. Going through the relicensure teacher portfolio process is a lot of work! But it's also helping me figure out a few things as well. I didn't realize it was going to get quite so complicated, but that's probably more me than the actual process! It's taken a long time to figure out what to include in my portfolio, and I still don't have all of the answers, yet.
There are ten standards. So far, I've written a little more than three of them. The next one needs to include lesson plans, which luckily, even though I deleted a lot of them from my computer, I still had several paper copies that should work.
I also need to create a curriculum map. For quite awhile, I've wanted/needed a curriculum map! Over the summer, I was given one for math. Reading, writing, and some social studies and science is included in the reading program we're piloting this year, as well as having Science Demo Team. However, I still didn't have a curriculum map that shows all of the pieces together over the course of the year along with the standards and objectives they cover. With a curriculum map, I can really see what I've taught, and what I need to teach and/or review. This morning, I finished up some more on my year long curriculum map. This has actually helped reduce some stress, even after a week of researching and stressing about it! Now I have a better plan for making sure that science and social studies are completely covered, yay!
Over the next few weeks, I'll bring the reading program books home and go through them a week at a time. My goal is to have the reading and writing sections of the curriculum map included by the end of January. At that point, I think that it'll be complete!
This whole process needs to be complete by the beginning of April so that it can get processed on time. Good thing I already took all the tests!
*Unofficially, this is my fifth year - the first three years were part-time.
