Jess Pauszek December 10, 2013 Composition Pedagogy Patrick Berry Portfolio Reflection Compiling the work Ive

done this semester into a portfolio has made me aware of so many things about my work and myself. First off, I chose to do a website because as the scholarship on New Media and digital work increases, I find myself worried Im going to be left behind. I didnt get into Composition and Rhetoric with any real interest in digital work because I found it extremely hard to understand and too difficult to teach myself. However, in the process of creating (albeit using a template) a very basic website, I realized that I actually enjoy this digital work Im just intimidated by it. This portfolio gave me the opportunity to begin to explore how I can gain an on-line scholarly presence. While I know I need to develop this more thoroughly, Im happy for the opportunity to have begun this work. In the products Ive uploadedfive reading responses, a teaching statement, a conference presentation, a PowerPoint, and a final paperIve noticed things about my writing that Id like to improve. At times, because of how slow a writer I am, I critique each line and have a hard time cutting my work. However, I think some of this would benefit if I push myself to cut some of the writing I have and attempt to say things differently, expressing the same idea but perhaps actually toying with the syntactical structure. For instance, my teaching statement reflects my current ideas about how I envision my work in the field. To be sure, I see myself as someone interested, most notably, in community engagement or other pedagogical and scholarly practices that connect my work with the outside community. Yet, while I think this document adequately represents my interest and

engagement, Id like this piece to have more energy. I dont just want my statement to say, this is the work I do, but this is what I believe in. My investment in community engagement comes from a desire to advocate for social justice issues, and I think these issues come up daily based on, as Deborah Brandt notes, what literacies we sponsor. I want to find ways of highlighting the community work that I do as constantly informing, revising, and mediating the pedagogical practices I have. Less represented in my teaching statement is how I see my work being usefully integrated with WPA scholarship and questions of literacy, specifically in how courses are designed, what literacies are represented or sponsored in these practices, and how our assessments can better reflect the work we do in our classrooms and community. Some of this work becomes apparent in my final paper, which discusses issues with basic writing, placement practices, and community literacy in a Writing 104 class. Id like to start developing this work more to represent my interests beyond community engagement. As I reflect on this semester and the projects Ive done, I see threads throughout my work. But there are also some outlying projects that Im still attempting to bring together to be represented in these pedagogical discussions. For instance, in another class I was researching how youth literacies (both in-and-out-of-school) are connected to the students coming into our First Year Composition classes. Im interested in the connection of K-12 work and FYC, which I havent seen represented as thoroughly as I think it should be. In effect, I think that FYC courses could learn from the work being done in Literacy Studies or Education in regard to youth literacies. This interest stems from multiple years of working with middle school, high school, and, now, elementary school students on writing. Perhaps I dont need these community projects to be represented in my scholarship, but even

without teaching in a secondary school, I think those in Composition need to be aware of the introduction of Common Core standards and whats happening within secondary contexts. Im proud of the work Ive done this semester and the breadth of topics weve been able to coverbetween New Media, translingual, basic writing, critical, feminist, and multimodal pedagogies. And while Ive found ways to engage with all of them, I want to continue to think about how feminist scholarship informs my work, as I move forward. Additionally, I would like to see how I can push myself to use New Media in thinking through community literacy projects.