Christian Anderson Final Portfolio Analysis Essay Ms.

Ingram 12/13/13 My Portfolio In my Weebly account, I have organized my page as follows: The first page is the Final draft of the Final paper, next is my Genre Study Assignment, after which follows my Midterm Paper, then the High School Literacy Narrative, Two Writers Notebook Artifacts and Wildcard assignment, my Blog Posts and finally an About Me Page. The main reason I decided to set my website up in this manner is that it makes sense to me to go from large documents to progressively smaller and older assignments. I combined the two Writers Notebook Assignments and the Wildcard assignment into one page because I felt as though they could be accurately handled on the same page. I am adding the About Me page for any who are interested in learning a little bit more about who I am and possibly correlating that to some of the elements and styles of my literature.

First off, this Final Paper has helped me look back on work I otherwise probably would have ignored. It has allowed me to go back and analyze what I would have done differently, as you will see later on in this analysis. As I have progressed through this course, I feel as though I have had several key Ah-Ha! moments. They often came after hours of work on a paper and having issues putting pen to paper like I wanted to, but then suddenly I would realize a much simpler or elegant way of

saying one particular thing or how to structure a paragraph for more flow. As you will see later in this paper, specifically when we get to the Literacy Narrative and my Draft of it; I will illustrate just what I am speaking about.

So, in the beginning of the year, our first major assignment was the Literacy Narrative. This was new to me, as I had never been allowed to write on my own before without major structure. So, naturally I was stumped on what exactly to write My first Ah-Ha! moment was when you mentioned literacy isnt just about writing, and I thought Hey Im fairly literate in music, why not write about that! and so I did. What I thought was going to be a 4-page paper turned into approximately 11 pages in my draft. I soon realized through peer editing that it was too long and unfocused on one specific event, as you had said you wanted it to be. I guess I got a little carried away because I had never put to words what a big impact music has had on my life and I wanted to get most of it out if at all possible. One of the things you said you wanted us to do was be descriptive in our imagery and make you feel like youre on the journey with us, and I think this excerpt accurately captures my feelings about music. Music became my life, a way for me to express myself when I felt that there was no other way to. Later that year, my parents got separated, and believing that it was entirely my fault, I fell into a deep depression. Without even thinking about it, I would spend hours at the piano, forming stories in my head and working them out on my little black and white keys.

You see, in my early childhood, things were dark, and music was my only real friend. It never spoke a word to me or hugged me, but it enveloped me in a great sense of comfort. I knew my music and it new me. It was where I could go to hide from the world and all I had seen in it. But the wonderful thing about music is that it constantly challenged me to move forward with myself and with it, so I never stopped learning new things and still havent to this day. Even when I was writing this paper, when I typed out the aforementioned excerpt, it put me back in my seat a little, I had never realized one of the best lessons in life that music taught me before even my parents: when life gives you a lemon or a discordant chord, turn it into your own symphony. No one can ever hold you down unless you let him or her. It took a teacher like you, Ms. Ingram, to give me the ability to write freely about one of the things I love most in life to realize just how profound of an impact it has had on my life.

Moving on to the Midterm Paper, I realize now how I could have smoothed out this paper, instead I answered every question to the letter but did so in a blocky, choppy format. The questions that were posed were very thoughtful though, because I never considered what I would think about reading someone other than my own paper, how could my editing be anything like a teacher with a degree and a job? How would I ever be of any use other than basic grammar, which you also said not to correct them on unless it was flagrant. So when we started peer editing the first paper drafts and getting feedback, I realized that my peers had a lot more insight to offer than I ever previously thought. I voiced my concerns in this paper as evidenced below.

My Question was When we are talking about giving and receiving feedback; is it going to primarily come from you, or our peers? I chose this question because I have never been in a peer guided class like this one before, so I was interested in what the class would be like in terms of feedback. Would it be fruitless or uneducated slop from my peers or would it be of the same caliber as that from my former teachers, endless pages of grammatical corrections and things that made no sense to me. The answer to my question is quite simple really; this class is a peer oriented, teacher guided workshop. It allows for students to interact with one another and help each other build stronger papers with the teacher acting more like a moderator than an actual teacher.

As you can see, I learned a lot about this class structure from this assignment. I came to the realization that you are in a relatively new frame of mind as a teacher. You see the students as more equals as humans and we can benefit from that kind of respect greatly. It allows us to open up about our experiences better and also makes us more willing to learn. The guest speaker you brought in said that the only way we can ever be bored in class is if we let ourselves get bored, because we should never let ourselves drift that far away and lose that much interest in the subject at hand. We always have to figure out one way or one thing that we like about the class and use that as the basis for our interest in the class. The last sentence in the above excerpt also shown below is, in my opinion a strong summation of this class as a whole. allows for students to interact with one another and help each other build stronger papers with the teacher acting more like a moderator than an actual teacher.

As for the Genre Study Analysis Assignment, I chose to compare Military Commerce emails to a textbook we would use in a class such as this. This was probably my weakest work of the semester; being that I could not get my hands on the textbook in particular I was in search of for comparison so I had to make alterations and as such, felt like the work was somewhat compromised. However, I feel that this paper highlighted a lot of my current weaknesses in my writing, so the assignment was valuable for that in particular. One example is my paragraph-to-paragraph transitions, they are typically choppy and I cant seem to get them to flow correctly. Below is an example of one such transition that I believe I could smooth out, but Im not sure how. These genres, as I have stated before, have their place in this world and need to continue to exist because of their essential necessity to our Nations education and protection. The major differences between high school and college when encountering these essays is that the literature books in high school try and cover so much material that you almost feel lost, especially without proper guidance from a teacher like I lacked.

The idea of Readers Response Letters and Blog Posts were new to me this year. I actually believe that they did help in a lot of ways and provided a relaxed setting in which to provide feedback on a reading or series of questions, almost like an in

person dialogue with a friend. I found the comments received on Weebly to be everything from witty to sincere to, in your case Ms. Ingram, constructive and patient. My two artifacts come from the Weebly comments, the first is from the very first blog post and Ms. Ingram and I were having issues reading my post because somehow it was all in the title? I still have no idea how that happened, but once that was rectified, I asked if we would be penalized for getting out of our comfort zone and failing in a writing. This was the comment that I received in response: Christian, Yay - I can see your whole post now! Nice questions. I think that many of the answers to the questions you pose in your last paragraph will come from the drafting process, from not rushing through writing assignments, through becoming a more aware writer. Regarding your first question: why would I penalize you for doing something I've asked you to do? The portfolio will allow you ample space to explain those risks you've taken, even those that didn't resul t in great successes.

This comment gave me confidence in the fact that I could try out new ideas in this class and not be penalized for it. The next comment, while less of a constructional comment, is more of a funny personal anecdote from Ms. Ingram, it really made my day reading it when I received it and it made for some interesting dialogue in follow up discussions. Not every comment that is helpful has to be strict and structured; some of the best advice comes in forms as nonchalant as this. Teachers yelling in students' faces? Christian, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, on how language and power relate in educational settings. And I liked reading about your goals, especially that of being the mischievous grandpa!

When my brother and I were little and still believed in Santa, my grandpa wrote a letter--as if he was Santa--and requested spaghetti with my mom's homemade sauce and meatballs instead of cookies on Christmas Eve. My brother and I insisted that my mom comply - and she was so angry with her dad, ha! (Plus, her Grandpa sounds like a completely awesome person, how can you not love spaghetti and meatballs instead of cookies and milk for Christmas?!?) I believe the two key concepts I most associated with this semester were to take risks and providing and receiving feedback. I felt like I could go out on a limb with my ideas and see where they would take me. For example, in my Genre Study, I choose two completely and utterly incompatible things and looked for similarities in them. Was the paper good? Not so much. But I tried, and revised it, and ultimately was proud of the fact that I somehow made Military e-mails compare to a Literature textbook. Also in the spirit of risk taking, I have not censored myself on the things I like to do (not in a vulgar manner, just not so watered down as to please people) or talk about in my papers because I found out this semester that if you really want to engage the reader in your piece, sometimes you have to dig deep inside and pull those bad memories out and look back on them so that you can accurately portray your feelings and the situation. The ability to do that is what turns a willful suspense of disbelief in reading into an illusion of reality. You go from saying okay, ill play along with the action to oh gosh I feel like Im actually having breakfast in the restaurant at The Breakfast Club. The second concept I identified with most was the giving and receiving peer reviews. I feel that I gave some good advice to people in a polite manner hopefully, and I am absolutely sure that I received the same from

my classmates. Having never done peer reviews before, it was a little shaky at first, but now I feel that we are all fairly proficient at editing a paper from a literary standpoint, not a grammatical one. This leads me to believe that this style of editing and teaching in general is the way to go for classes in the future, its definitely more engaging than lectures and you dont feel as diminutive in a small class as you would in say, a lecture hall.

Overall, I believe that my strongest paper was the Literature Narrative; it is the one I most easily connected with and can identify as one of my greatest works in my writing portfolio throughout the years. The Midterm paper is probably next up on that list, it was highly enlightening and allowed me to do something in theater thats called Metatheater. It is when theater realizes it is theater but it happens in a theater production. It makes for a very surreal environment but it allows us to look on the work we are doing with a completely different aspect. Its comparable to a bird flying 50 feet above the ground and a space station satellite viewing the entire world. Yes the satellite cannot see as clearly as the bird what is going on in that specific area, but it CAN see the entire globe and what is happening as a whole. That is what I feel like happened to me this semester, I feel like I have gone from being a bird to a satellite, forgive the cheesy metaphor. I used to get so focused in on my writing that I could never see what needed to be changed and constantly fought with my teachers over grades because of it. But now, I can step back and look at the work as a whole and see that while I may not be focused in as intensely, I can see the entire body of the work and what needs to be changed or let alone. For these

reasons, according to the syllabus, I believe I deserve a high B because I did not fully turn in some assignments, which lowers my grade. However, I do believe I was always engaged in class and asking questions and such, so my participation grade should be fairly high.