Beth Hebert has a vision. She would like to see the day when all students entering middle school could approach their teachers and say, "I know you have a folder on me, but let me also show you my portfolio."
Photo by Mark Regan
That dream is a reality for many graduates of Crow Island School in Winnetka, Ill., where Hebert is principal. Asking students to keep cumulative portfolios of their work has been part of the elementary school program for 14 years now. As a result, Hebert and the teachers at Crow Island have much to share with others about the portfolio process.
Portfolios often "find their way into schools" because teachers, administrators, parents, and children become dissatisfied with standardized test scores that "don't describe children well," Hebert observed. Portfolios, she said, "show a depth of work" that such tests simply can't.
But what often happens is that "we, unwittingly, begin to standardize portfolios." And that, Hebert maintained, "is a huge misalignment—it's like trying to put Volkswagon tires on a Chevrolet." What teachers and principals need to do instead "is discover what portfolios do that nothing else does as well."
Portfolios help build self-awareness, for example. "If there is a curriculum for meta-cognition, it is portfolio," Hebert noted. "The process of selection and making decisions about how to organize a portfolio stimulates that kind of thinking in students."
Portfolios also contribute to teacher growth. Through portfolios, teachers find that students "can become competent participants in assessing their own learning," Hebert said. Teachers then begin to ask: Is this portfolio about my teaching, supported by student evidence? Or, is this portfolio about student learning, supported by my assistance? That subtle shift in perspective is a first step in truly giving students ownership of their portfolios and their learning, she explained.
At Crow Island School, 26 teachers have 26 different ways of helping students create and maintain their portfolios, Hebert told educators. As a school leader, she had to learn to be comfortable with this variety. Administrators need to "define the direction," Hebert advised, but they also need to understand that "teachers don't have to be in the same car. Everybody will arrive at the station, but at different times—and that's okay."
Teachers will initially want to impose their own sense of organization on their students' collections, Hebert observed. They soon discover, however, that children become expert at explaining why their portfolios are organized as they are.
At Crow School, for example, teachers initially provide students with reflection tags that prompt them to include certain examples of work in their portfolios—to show progress toward a goal or growth in a curricular area, for example. Once students become familiar with reflecting on their work, however, they "start asking for blank tags so they can express their own thinking."
And that is the power of portfolios, Hebert affirmed. Through portfolios, students have a voice—they know their work and they know how to talk about it, she said. Portfolios give students "power over their own learning."