INTRODUCTION    

Hello, my name is Pat Conole and I invite you to look inside my professional portfolio.  As you turn the pages, you will find out about me as well as well as my beliefs on education.  Becoming a French teacher is a second career for me.  After graduating from Ithaca College and living in Paris,  France my junior year, I became a reporter in the Lifestyle department of the Herald Journal Newspaper in Syracuse. When I started having a family, I became a contributing writer for the Post Standard in Syracuse and also did free lance writing for medical groups and businesses.  With a communications background and having raised two children of my own, I feel I can connect to students in a creative learning style.  While I’m still a contributing writer, I’m completing a master’s degree in adolescent French education 7-12.

My philosophy of education is that all children can be motivated to learn when they receive the proper support system within a nurturing environment, which recognizes their uniqueness.

My portfolio will embody all about me;  the INTASC standards for teachers;  my reflection on those standards and some of my personal evidence, which shows how the standards are put to use in the classroom setting.  One of the reasons standards are so important is that they document what all teachers constitute as good teaching-in other words a shared view or a common language that we all can all understand and be on the same page toward becoming professional teachers.  I will also use this portfolio when I go to job interviews because it will be my own personal reflection on my journey in education and the educational beliefs I have strengthened along the way.