CEDO555: Professional Portfolio Experience Week 2

It's week two of this class and we are working on creating the outline of our professional portfolio, as well as developing a personal-professional vision/mission statement. Sounds simple, right? I wish that were the case!

Part of my problem is that I tend to over think this kind of activity. I have always had trouble truly understanding and owning the idea of vision and mission statements. We have those where I work, along with a set of Guiding Principles that we go through every time we meet as a Leadership Team. I find the principles to be an excellent framework for facilitating a discussion about what's been happening since our last meeting as related to our list. We end up having truly valuable discussions about topics that might not come up if we merely followed an agenda created by one or two people. We don't talk about the vision/mission regularly, and to be honest, it sounds so "pie-in-the-sky" that I have a hard time connecting to it. I hope that by the time I complete this course, I will have a better understanding and appreciation of what these statements mean and can possibly contribute to our company statements when the time comes to revisit/revise.

As far as creating the outline for my portfolio goes, I feel pretty comfortable with using Google Sites and tried to remember that I can always edit what I've started--nothing is written in stone. I think letting go of my inner perfectionist in this instance helped me complete this assignment without too much stress...I look forward to adding content and letting my work tell the story about me as a professional in the business of education.

CEDO555: Professional Portfolio Experience Week 1

This week we were formally introduced to the topic of creating a professional portfolio of our work throughout this cohort. There are different types of portfolios, determined by the purpose or the message that is being conveyed. We reviewed professional portfolios that are posted online, which was helpful in visualizing different interpretations of an electronic professional portfolio. A resource I would like to come back to in the future is the Carnegie Collection of e-portfolios for the variety of educators represented and the structure of the portfolios.

I think my portfolio for this masters program will serve a few purposes; to reflect on the process, to provide examples of the work I've created and to show that I can identify how it all connects to the standards. While coming up with examples of work and reflecting on the process should be pretty natural, I am nervous about connecting it all to the standards. I believe that once I get started and know I'm on the right track, I will be fine...I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed in the moment! I think once I develop the structure and list the categories to be included, finding examples of work represent the topics should fall into place.