7th Webinar Blog Response

1.How is your portfolio progress? Did you upload your Code of Ethics? Contact Information Form? Student Teaching Questionnaire? Welcome Letter to Students and Parents? Teaching as a Career Letter?

Upon reading this list, I feel completely delinquent. I didn't know that all of these things are required for the portfolio. Where would I get a list of things required, including an explanation for these things? I feel like the TIR Program has great ambitions for creating measurable assessments to make sure that teachers are off to a great start, but I also feel like in the eight months I've been part of this program, it's been a never ending series of leap frogging from putting out one fire to another. I think with all of the intelligent minds organizing this program, someone could figure out a way to synthesize and stream line all of our requirements in a way that a student can understand at the offset of the program what is required of us. Anyone who has been a teacher longer than a week understands that our entire professional life is a series of putting out small fires (grading, dealing with parent issues, dealing with student issues, planning what lesson will come next, then the whole vicious cycle all over again) so sometimes one more fire to put out (much less a list like I have here) feels completely overwhelming. It almost feels like a cruel joke that we're enrolled in classes that show us what we need to do as teachers to make our learning environment as comfortable and successful as possible --and then the Rio learning environment doesn't appeal to its own recommendations. Sorry for the rant, and I know it's not any one person's fault, but it's really frustrating as a student to understand what is expected of me when it feels like so much of our expectations have been conveyed through seemingly missed deadlines.

2.Do you have one of your progress reports uploaded into your portfolio?

Again, I'm not really sure what is expected here. One of my own personal progress reports? (If so, where do I get that?) Or a progress report that is a grade I give a student? (If so, isn't that a FERPA violation?)