Most jobs these days stress teaching experience above almost every other criterion, including publications. Yet distinguishing your teaching record from that of every other graduate student on the market is far from easy, especially when you have only taught at Princeton, which offers less opportunity for pedagogy than many comparable institutions. One solution to this dilemma is the construction of a comprehensive and personalized teaching portfolio, which ideally will serve as a detailed guide to the many different skills you quickly acquireóeven when you have only precepted. In fact, precepting is not so different from the kinds of teaching you will do as a junior professoróit still involves designing a syllabus, grading papers, conferencing, leading discussion, and occasionally preparing lectures, all of which will be represented in your portfolio. In fact, the benefits of preparing a teaching portfolio go far beyond success on the job marketóthey also include a dose of self-reflection, which will invariably improve your abilities as a teacher, and, perhaps even more important, a new-found belief in your abilities and knowledge. At least, thatís the goal!

So what should be in your portfolio? The following represents a step-by-step guide to preparing a teaching dossier that you can add to and embellish throughout the course of your career. Even if you do not end up preparing a portfolio for the job market, you will eventually be called upon to produce one, as they are crucial to tenure decisions, adjunct hiring, and even for non-academic employees, so try to collect material for your dossier as soon as you begin teaching. I have now taught for five years, but have only recently become aware of the importance of the portfolio, in which time much useful material has slipped away from me. For more detailed help, and for an invaluable series of examples of portfolios ranging from those of graduate students to those of tenured faculty, see Peter Seldinís The Teaching Portfolio: A Practical Guide to Improved Performance and Promotion/Tenure Decisions, published by Anker in 1991.

1. Table of Contents
Your portfolio should be as well-organized and as accessible as possible, partly because this will reflect on your organizational abilities as a teacher, and partly because it will be read by all kinds of audiences, ranging from your peers and other members of your department to the deans.

2. Teaching Statement/Pedagogical Philosophy
Probably the most crucial element in any portfolio, and comparable in importance to those infernal personal statements required by the Ph.D. application process. These statements are usually anywhere from one to three pages in length, and should be as detailed and specific as possible. The first decision you face is whether to include all the different aspects of your teaching experience in one statement, or whether to break up your statement into discrete pieces, so that you discuss your feelings about grading, for example, in your section on student papers. This is up to you, but my hunch is that a successful statement should incorporate all aspects of your teaching philosophy. Crucial components include a detailed list of each course you have taught and the level of responsibility you possessed (complete with details of how many students were in each section, the make-up of each class in terms of majors and ages, the different challenges posed by different types of students etc.); the university or departmental objectives/rationale for each course; your own objectives for each course (were they fulfilled? how did they fit in to your larger goals for teaching?); a discussion of your strategies within the classroom; how often, how, and why you conference; your policy on grading, drafts, and re-writes; your feelings about the use of outside materials (class trips, extra reading, videos etc.); and, most crucially perhaps, the steps you have taken to improve as a teacher, what you have learned from your colleagues and students, and the changes you intend to make to your teaching style and objectives. The latter may even merit a separate section, where you can include any courses you have taken, meetings you have attended, and books you have read on and about pedagogy.

3. Sample Syllabi/Hand-Outs
The rest of the different sections of your portfolio can either be included as appendices or as separate sections, and should probably include a one paragraph heading providing additional information to that contained in your teaching statement. A guide to the changes you made to each successive syllabus, and the reasons for each change, is one possible way of introducing this material, as is a discussion of student reactions to the syllabus. The various hand-outs you have used in class could easily be given their own separate section, but may well work better within the context of the syllabus. Again, a discussion of how well (and how badly) each hand-out performed, whether you have used it again, and your sources for the material used is almost certainly helpful. The portfolio should display how you have grown and learnt as a teacher, and so a discussion of failures as well as successes is worth considering.

4. Writing Exercises/Peer Review Sheets
This section is only for those who have taught writing, but I include it because I think it is crucial to personalize the portfolio as much as possible, and including a discussion of the different strategies (freewriting, group exercises etc) available to English teachers to encourage writing is crucial. Even if you have not taught a writing class, you may want to discuss how you encouraged students to read and comment on each otherís work in and outside of precept. Sample peer review sheets (including photocopies of successful and unsuccessful ones from previous classes) are in my opinion a particularly interesting guide to the personality of a teacher.

5. Assignments/Exams
This section could easily be incorporated into the previous one, but one advantage of including it on its own is that it provides a nice segue into the next section, on sample student papers/grading. Try to include every assignment and exam you have offered, complete with a rationale (as detailed as possible) for each one with reference to the texts being used in the classroom. If you have not had the opportunity to design your own assignments, you could put together a series of possible ones based on the kinds of papers you have graded or texts you have taught.

6. Sample Student Papers
From now on, make sure to photocopy a couple of examples, both good and bad, from each batch of student papers you grade (making sure to ask permission from the student first). Discuss why you chose these papers, what kinds of problems and solutions are common and distinctive to each, why you chose to give the grade you did (with reference to the institutionís policy on gradesóparticularly important for those who have taught at Princeton over the last couple of years), and whether you would grade differently now. Including examples of the same assignment from different classes/years is particularly useful.

7. Record of Student Evaluations
Make sure to save these from now on, and include general information (median score etc.) in order to provide context. Include representative samples of student comments, and any outside letters of support you may have received.

8. Faculty Evaluations
This is a crucial component of any teaching portfolio, and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. If you are precepting, invite the faculty member for whom you are teaching into your classroom and ask for a detailed written evaluation. If you are planning to go on the job market, ask your advisors into precept so that they can include this information in their letters of support. Invite faculty from the writing program or the new McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning into your classroom. The more experienced teachers who see you teach, the better idea both you and your audience will have of what kind of teacher you are. This is a good thing, honest! Make sure to include letters from faculty members who have seen you teach at other institutions, if this is the case.

9. Videotape Evidence
Arrangements can now be made to videotape your class. If you can bear it, this will be the best evidence of all for those evaluating your teaching ability from afar.

10. Closing statement
This should be a reflection on how the task of putting the portfolio together has enabled you to learn about your strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, and what impact this will have on your future pedagogical strategies.