Narrative Regarding the Implementation of Portfolios at SoHDA

The School of History and Dramatic Arts at Sotomayor Learning Academies (SoHDA) is a Linked Learning School that has implemented Senior Defense Portfolios for all 12th graders to ensure their learning ties into the Linked Learning Pathways. SoHDA’s pathway correlates to the performing arts, which is interwoven into their curriculum via integrated Project-Based Learning units created by faculty.

In order to meet other school initiative requirements tied to Linked Learning, such as having the ability to track student progress over time and ensure certain artifacts are included as part of the Senior Defense Portfolio, creating a portfolio course was the only option that would ensure efficient management.

Mr. Honigstein, ROP Teacher who oversees the portfolio implementation at SoHDA, had begun using Google Sites to house student portfolios. The ITF suggested the idea of hosting and maintaining the school's student portfolios in Schoology, which would meet quite a few of the school’s needs. One need is the ability to track student progress for a span of four years. Mr. Honigstein also wanted to have each teacher be able to mentor his or her own students. The mentee-to-mentor ratio, he said, “would have to be 5 to 1.”

Mr. Honigstein then created a course called “SoHDA Senior Defense Portfolios” and imported into it all the mentees (students) and mentors (teachers). As he imported the students, he realized there was a potential “pitfall” in seeing no functional way of breaking up students into faculty-lead subgroups. The ITF suggested that the best way to meet the school's needs for having defined sets of mentors to mentees
was to use the "Grading Groups" feature in Schoology. Mr. Honigstein created grading groups with each mentor (teacher) as the defined group titles. He then imported
the mentees (students) into each of the grading groups along
with mentors (teachers) overseeing their respective portfolios.