Shared Leadership:
Implementing Portfolio Practice

In Ste-Foy school, small teacher committees are sometimes mandated by the school team to explore issues or propose ideas on different aspects of school life and report back with recommendations. In 2002, Micheline Gagnée (current principal), Stewart Grant and Renée Almos took on the task to help the school implement portfolios school-wide while aiming for greater coherence in the practice within and across cycles.

Stewart Grant: Cycle 3 teacher Micheline Gagné: French teacher and Co-Principal (Current principal) Renée Halmos: Cycle 2 teacher

Portfolio practices at Ste-Foy School
Most teachers had already worked with Writing Portfolios. However, each teacher had his/her own way if interpreting what constituted a portfolio. The school team felt that in order to be more effective in implementing authentic assessment in various subject areas, it should aim for more continuity across the cycles and coherence within a cycle.

Therefore, teachers set out three goals for their portfolios:
"1- For teachers: to find an authentic way of assessing in order to get away from testing.
2- For students: to be more actively involved in their learning.
3- For parents: to be more active in their children's learning by helping them better understand where their child stands in his learning and where he is going. " The Portfolio team

A portfolio of portfolios
The committee began by looking at what the school team did well and where there was room for improvement. They brought their ideas and suggestions back to the staff who decided to document their process and their progress by providing samples, along with reflections, of what they were doing in class with regards to portfolios. Each teacher's contributions were stored in binder. In this way, they were effectively creating a school portfolio about portfolios.

This strategy helped the team document evidence of growth, map out commonalities and set goals for future development based on the evolving practices of the entire school team. Together, they have developed a better sense of what shows growth in portfolio practice. They look for such things as:

• A table of contents
• Organisation (by subject or other criteria)
• Before and after snapshots that show student growth
• Evaluation rubrics
• Evidence of selection
• Guidelines for students
• Student reflections

Working first with ELA as a core subject helped teachers understand how portfolios involve students in their learning, while allowing students to master the vocabulary and skills to talk about their growth. Over time, there was a shift from Writing Portfolios to multi-disciplinary ones. This came about when teachers began implementing project-based learning which involved more that one subject area as well as cross-curricular competencies.

Future developments
Over the 2003-2004 school year, the school team had progressed considerably in implementing portfolio practices in the classroom. But they were far yet from making it a natural part of the classroom environment. For instance, it remained an end-of-term rushed "activity".

Future goals therefore include:
Goal 1:
To develop portfolio practices that are better integrated in the teaching-learning cycle over time.
Suggested strategy: To integrate portfolio practices on a more regular basis, the school is proposing to dedicate a 40 minute period each week to portfolio time in the classroom schedule. This will help create portfolio habits and reflexes for teachers as well as students. It would allow for the important elements of goal setting, selection, reflection and self-evaluation. It is also a way to acknowledge that portfolios are a learning area in which students need to develop and practice portfolio-related skills.

Goal 2:
To work towards greater continuity across cycles
Suggested strategy: Agree on a certain number of basic items that should be found in every portfolio. For example, each portfolio could include a baseline writing sample and evidence of growth with more samples along the year. This might later evolve to include samples in other subject areas.

Conditions for success
In Ste-Foy School, implementing portfolios was and still is a school goal. Based on their experience, the team was asked whether portfolios can be implemented successfully by isolated teachers? Though they felt that it could be done, their personal experience was that it is a much more more difficult and slower process with many hurdles that can discourage a teacher. They felt that when a cycle or a school agrees to make it part of its practice, the portfolio gains purpose. It could be used to show growth throughout the child's school career. It could be used by teachers to discuss larger issues as a team, setting common goals. And, of course, everything becomes so much easier when there are colleagues with whom one can share resources and teaching practice ideas.

"I've worked in schools where some teachers are doing portfolios and others not. So there's no continuity. It's discouraging sometimes. It helps a lot when your cycle is doing it, and it's even better if the whole school is doing it. Everybody believes in it. We have common goals. As a team you can learn and do so much more." Stewart Grant

Leaving concrete traces through the binder was a simple way for Ste-Foy teachers to share their practice. That and being part of a cycle team working together to implement portfolios was especially helpful to new incoming teacher Renée Almos.

"It has encouraged me to look further into things and improve the use of portfolio in my own class. I was using it before, not as part of a team, more as an individual, struggling through that alone. I didn't have any support." Renée Almos

At the end of the 2003 school year, the committee recommended that work on the portfolio continue into 2004 with further goals for improvement and the support of the administration.