How to Construct a Teaching Portfolio

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A job application asks you to provide a teaching portfolio, and you are stumped. Never fear! This short blog will walk you through the basics of compiling your very own teaching portfolio, provide links to additional resources, and offer helpful tips to make this process as pain-free as possible. (Note: This post is written from the perspective and lived experience of an aspiring educator in the US who works in the community college system. Specific teaching portfolio requirements will differ between countries and institutions. The best place to find the most up-to-date information regarding these requirements is on individual university websites.)

 

What is a teaching portfolio?

A teaching portfolio is like an extended multi-document CV that showcases your teaching capabilities, glowing reviews from students, and any curriculum or course content you may have developed. In essence, your teaching portfolio will be a folder of documents that you store on a computer or cloud drive. Much like a CV, a teaching portfolio is a living document that is continuously updated and augmented. You will save everything and anything related to teaching in this folder. When applying for jobs, fellowships, or conferences, you will pull select documents from this folder that are relevant to the current application.

 

That sounds intimidating; where do I even start?

Much like writing your very first CV, compiling a teaching portfolio for the first time can feel overwhelming and tedious. The best practice is to start early if you even have an inkling that you may want to apply for teaching roles someday in the future. Even if time isn’t on your side, just begin with making a folder named “Teaching Portfolio”. Next, generate and save four files (Stanford Certificate Program, 2016) using your preferred word processing software:

  1. Teaching Philosophy Statement
  2. Draft Cover Letter
  3. Course-related Artifact
  4. Annotated student feedback

 

What other items would be helpful to keep in my teaching portfolio?

Several other teaching-related materials would be helpful to keep in nested folders of your teaching portfolio. If you have ever received any thank-you emails from students you have mentored in the lab or taught in a classroom setting, download a copy of these and save them in a “Student Feedback folder”.  Keep a list of names, emails, and approximate date ranges of students you have mentored in the lab, through programs at your institution, or within a scientific society. This will be helpful if you ever need to refer back to how many students you have mentored, reach out to them later, or brag about their many accomplishments. Keep a list of “Teaching, Mentoring, and Service” in addition to what you put on your CV. This way you can write down any teaching experience, workshop design, academic committee work, and outreach you do as it occurs. You can note memorable quotes or memories from these events that you can pull when you compose a cover letter and teaching statement. You should also note the approximate age ranges of students and mentees (middle school, high school, college, graduate, post-doc, etc.) because teaching jobs will often ask you whether you have experience teaching a certain age range or at a particular educational level. If you write it down in this document, you will not have to wrack your brain later. If you have participated in education workshops or training programs, save the certificates in a sub-folder of your teaching portfolio. If you have student feedback or teaching evaluations, also save these in your teaching portfolio. Some teaching jobs ask for student or formal teaching evaluations, so it is helpful to have these stored and ready to go if needed.

 

The Draft Cover Letter

Your cover letter will follow the typical format of a generic job application cover letter, but it will also provide context for the other items included in your teaching portfolio. Depending on the type of institution you apply to and the role, you will briefly describe 3 main categories of work: your research promise (if the position requires a research component), your teaching promise, and service experience. Different institutions will emphasize these three areas to different degrees. A whole separate blog post could be written on how to craft cover letters for teaching positions. In brief, this is the chance to not only introduce yourself to the hiring committee but also summarize the pieces you chose to include in your portfolio and why. Does your course artifact exemplify a central tenet of your teaching philosophy? State this explicitly in your cover letter. Does your annotated student feedback highlight one of your core strengths as an educator? Be sure to emphasize this in your cover letter.

 

The Teaching Philosophy statement

Much like the cover letter, a whole separate blog post could be written on how to compose and edit a teaching philosophy statement (or teaching statement). In short, you want to pick two to four themes or teaching values that you can illustrate with clear examples. A good template to follow is from the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning (Stanford CTL, 2024), but there are many other formats linked as well:

  1. Opening and framing: one or more paragraphs, which may include:
    1. A “hook” sentence
    2. A teaching or learning anecdote
    3. A statement about why you teach, followed by an explanation
    4. A specific example of a teacher or professor who had a great impact on you
    5. A summary of your teaching experience that goes beyond what your C.V. lists. (If this is included, it is often a full paragraph.)
  2. Theme/value 1: Name the theme/value
    1. How this value supports student learning
    2. A specific example to illustrate the theme or value
    3. The importance of the theme or value
  3. Theme/value 2: Name the theme/value
    1. How this value supports student learning
    2. A specific example to illustrate the theme or value
    3. The importance of the theme or value
  4. Theme/value 3: Name the theme/value
    1. How this value supports student learning
    2. A specific example to illustrate the theme or value
    3. The importance of the theme or value
  5. Conclusion: Briefly summarize your approach to teaching and why you’ve chosen it. Include:
    1. 1–2 courses you are prepared to teach currently
    2. 1–2 courses you would be excited to develop in the future
    3. Future goals and directions: What do you want to continue learning about teaching?

 

A link to a guide for composing a teaching statement: https://www.cmu.edu/student-success/other-resources/handouts/comm-supp-pdfs/teaching-philosophy-statement.pdf

A guide and worksheet for composing a teaching statement: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14345k0dcwppL5VWj9SN65-shh-4px96_/edit#heading=h.cvuycy5ymef5

A journal paper explaining best practices to help you write a teaching statement: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21652498/

 

The Course Related Artifact

A “course artifact” could be any number of different types of documents (Stanford Certificate Program, 2016). This will greatly depend on your teaching experience and what sort of teaching materials you have created. The most common document would be a syllabus you have made for a course you taught in your discipline. Alternatively, the course artifact can also be a specific lesson plan that articulates learning outcomes for the students and an assessment that tests student learning on those specific learning outcomes. Again, if this is your first time composing a syllabus, learning assessment, or lesson plan, there are many excellent resources online there for how to get started.

 

Annotated Student Feedback

The annotated feedback is an opportunity to showcase self-reflection and growth as an educator. This annotated feedback can be from end-of-semester/quarter student evaluations, anonymous student feedback surveys, or small-group feedback sessions run with students who participated in the class (Stanford Certificate Program, 2016). The key thing here is that annotations reflect on the most important takeaways from the feedback, provide context, and propose solutions for future improvements on the teaching methods or course content.

Links to syllabus templates and guides:

Links to lesson-plan and assessment guides:

 

A Brief Note on Diversity Statements

As of writing this blog in 2026, there is still an executive order in place in the US that puts restrictions on institutions that receive federal funding with respect to DEI in hiring practices. Different institutions take different approaches to this. Depending on the institution you are applying to, it may be VERY wise to write elements of what you would otherwise have put in a diversity statement into your teaching philosophy statement. HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Community Colleges, and many large state universities serve students who come from historically minority backgrounds. These institutions care very much about hiring faculty and staff who prioritize equity and inclusion in their teaching practices.

 

Further Resources

If you would like more guidance for creating and augmenting your teaching portfolio, please visit these sites and resource documents:

 

If you are interested in learning more about how to prepare for a teaching demonstration, consider visiting these resources:

 

References

  • Stanford Certificate Program. (2016). Center for Teaching and Learning; Stanford University. https://ctl.stanford.edu/grad-teaching/certificate-program
  • Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning. (2024, March 8). Teaching Philosophy Statements:. Teaching Philosophy Stand-Alone Resource.docx. (2026). Teaching Philosophy Stand-Alone Resource.docx. Google Docs. https://docs.google.com/document/d/14345k0dcwppL5VWj9SN65-shh-4px96_/edit#heading=h.cvuycy5ymef5

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About the Author

Iris Mollhoff

Iris is currently working as a Part-Time Instructor at Foothill College in Los Altos, CA. She received her PhD from Stanford University while working on tomato polyacetylene biochemistry and plant-pathogen interactions. Iris enjoys enthusing about equitable education and medicinal plants to whomever will listen. She cares for a shelf of houseplants and a garden plot in her free time. You can find her on Instagram: @iris.mollhoff.