I am so excited to share with all of you that I am officially a first grade teacher! I got the call a week ago and my brain has been on overload since. I am ecstatic!! My job is at the elementary school that I student taught and subbed in.. and since I student taught with first grade, I get to teach with my mentor teacher from student teaching again! This time in my own classroom. MY CLASSROOM. So cool to finally say that! I wanted to share the details on my Mini Portfolio that I put together for this school. As I mentioned in this post, I dropped it off to my principal during the school year. He kept it and brought it along to my interview to share with the superintendent, assistant superintendent, and a first grade teacher who also sat in on the interview. They all loved it! I got so many compliments on it during the interview and I'm SO glad I took the time to put it together. I started with the cover page. I wanted to include this page because I felt like it was a more personal cover letter. I wanted perspective interviewers to see the passion that I have for teaching and I felt like this - combined with some pages I included after - gave me the chance to do so. I saw this "cover letter" idea on another blog but I can't for the life of me remember the name! The next thing I included was my cover letter specific to that elementary school. This document has been changed to get rid of any personal information. :) After that, I put in the four page district application followed by a page I created while subbing. I asked students why a school should hire me or why I would be a good teacher and compiled a list! Next I included my resume and reference list. There's too much personal information to really edit out to show you. One thing I will say is to include any special awards that you feel could be conversation starters. Even though it sounds silly, I included my three "most spirited" awards that I received from cheerleading in high school. The assistant superintendent loved that! She commented on how I can say I'm positive and energetic but that really proves that I am. The next pages were my teaching philosophy, "Are You Sure You Want to be a Teacher?", three letters of recommendation, and a copy of my license. I had it spiral bound at staples and had them add a clear cover and a black vinyl back to make it look even more complete. It cost about 15 dollars to have all of those pages printed and bound. I'd say it was well worth the money because it really did stand out.. but I would only go that "all out" for the schools where I REALLY wanted to teach. I love how put together and organized it looks when laid out. The coral theme really pulled it all together. So that is it! If you can spare the extra money, I highly recommend doing so. You have got to stand out if you want the job! Even if you don't want to have someone else bind it.. you could just as easily put one together in a less expensive way! Hope I gave you some things to think about and good luck with your job search!! Stay tuned for my post about my actual portfolio! *This post was to give my fellow teacher friends ideas. Please feel free to feed off of the pages I shared but I ask that you don't copy word for word. Let your own heart shine - your interviewers will want to see who you are and what you're all about! :)