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Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
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It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
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Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
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The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
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The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
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Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
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We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
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To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
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There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
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---- Sam Levenson

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett

This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson

Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown

The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar

it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor

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 Saturday March 29 2008

Teaching Portfolio

Do you have a teaching portfolio?

I’ve been at my current job for three years now and I haven’t updated my teaching portfolio or resume since I started. Actually the portfolio hadn’t been updated since two years before that. I’ve been updating my resume the last week and I realized that I had a lot of points to add, new skills, new courses taught and created, presentations and now obviously my column on EFL for the Korea Herald.

After updating my resume I decided to give my portfolio a once over. I’m not impressed - it’s time for a complete overhaul. I’m going to pull out some materials that I thought were impressive but now look decidedly second rate. It’s also time to add a few more activities.

I have also spent some time thinking about what should be included in an EFL teaching portfolio. Clearly all the required documents or copies for a VISA, though in Korea I no longer need a work visa. Letters of recommendation, teacher evaluations, and a teaching philosophy. It’s also been a long time since I wrote my teaching philosophy so I’ll be rewriting that as well in order to incorporate new thoughts and ideas that I have learned from books read and conferences attended.


I’ve also decided that I should include one or two sample lesson plans (one for a four skills class and another for a content course). Additionally to complement the lesson plans I intend to include samples of student work - this is easy to get in digital format due to my moodle. I’ve also taken pictures of several projects students have completed in the past.

Finally for the past couple of years I’ve been planning to make a video of myself teaching. This week I start that process. I’ve got a friend coming to my class to run the camcorder. I’ll be recording around three to four classes and then cutting the video down to 6-8 minutes total. I’m planning on getting shots of myself talking to the class, working with small groups, individual work, and in class games that I have created and printed professionally. I’ll also cut to a couple of powerpoint slides directly relevant to what is going on in class. All of this will run with a voice over explaining my teaching style and activities.

I’ll put the video onto DVD as well as have it streaming on my teaching portfolio web site. This site is not yet created, but will have sample materials for download, a teaching philosophy, resume, student samples, and of course my video streaming as well as available for download at high resolution.

for other ideas about portfolios see my post from 2004 as well as this article from Suite 101. Please vote in the poll re: teaching portfolios.

I am looking forward to comments from readers on their thoughts about teaching portfolios. Do you have one? what is in it? What do you think should be included and what should be excluded?


Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Mar 29, 2008 at 08:15 PM
Teaching | Polling_Station |

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