Jana  Rosinski  Teaching  Statement      Composition  is  potential.  It  is  the  space  to  compose  from  a  vast  combination  of  materials  and  communicate  a  host  of  locations.  This  is  where  I  see  my  potential  as  a  scholar  and  educator  in  making  visible  the  possibility  in  what  it  means  to  write.    My  undergraduate  education  trained  me  as  a  teacher  of  secondary  education.  What  I  possessed  was  a  determination  to  demystify  writing,  but  what  I  lacked  was  language  or  pedagogy  to  do  so.  I  found  myself  at  a  loss  for  engaging  not  only  what  writing  was,  but  how  it  was  done,  why  it  was  done,  and  the  manner  in  which  it  circulated.  My  first  English  teaching  position  revealed  the  complexity  of  teaching  writing  in  a  standardized  curriculum  channeled  toward  testing  proficiency,  serving  as  catalyst  for  me  to  pursuit  a  MA  degree  in  Written  Communication  at  Eastern  Michigan  University.  In  my  MA  program,  I  studied  writing  theory  and  pedagogy,  technical  communication,  and  rhetoric;  notions  of  what  it  meant  to  write  expanded  beyond  linearity  as  composition  that  considered  histories,  relationships,  and  terminology  of  people,  places,  and  events.  Writing  moved  beyond  a  process  to  an  action  that  was  mindful  of  materiality,  connectivity,  and  circulation.  While  my  own  scholarship  in  the  making  played  at  the  edges  of  possibility,  searching  for  theory  enacted  as  method,  I  was  granted  the  opportunity  to  teach  courses  in  the  university’s  first  year  writing  program,  tutor  in  the  university  writing  center,  and  serve  as  managing  editor  and  co-­‐developer  of  a  flexibly  referred  online  journal  that  published  student  work  from  writing  intensive  courses  across  the  university.  I  worked  to  design  a  balance  of  theory  and  pedagogy  that  pushed  at  what  was  available  to  compose.    Teaching  “Writing  the  College  Experience”  and  “Writing  the  Public  Experience”,  as  well  as  co-­‐teaching  and  workshopping  with  a  section  of  conditionally  admitted  students  to  the  university  through  a  grant  program  with  Detroit  Public  Schools,  provided  me  space  to  enact  a  pedagogy  that  encouraged  students  to  consider  what  was  (un)available  in  composing.  As  a  focus  on  methodology,  composition  as  potential  takes  different  shapes  in  the  classroom,  but  what  remains  is  an  emphasis  on  materiality  in  composing  –  what  is  available  and  for  what  purpose.  Together  we  unpacked  materiality  to  understand  it  as  material  things  as  well  as  semiotic  –  events,  places,  values,  institutions,  practices.  Students  designed  and  created  media  rich  texts  that  functioned  as  ecologies  of  their  own  literacies,  experiences,  and  knowledge  situated  within  influence  relations.  In  creating  a  literacy  narrative,  student/agents  recorded  audio  podcasts  of  their  text  to  be  read  with  digital  installations  that  traced  the  artifacts  and  sponsors  of  their  literacy  through  time  and  space.  For  another  project,  student/agents  created  interactive  timelines  that  wove  their  history  growing  up  in  their  hometown  together  with  ethnographic  research  they  conducted  on  the  spaces,  places,  people  and  events  of  the  city.  These  illuminated  projects,  among  many  others  of  varying  scope,  make  visible  the  type  of  connectivity  between  students’  self(s)  and  larger  forces  of  influence  that  work  to  compose  and  decompose  writing.  In  dialogues  and  in  composing,  I  am  constantly  working  with  my  student/agents  to  push  at  the  edges  of  what  is  noticed,  expected,  and  accepted.    

Tutoring  in  the  main  location  of  the  Writing  Center,  as  well  as  in  the  satellite  spaces  in  The  College  of  Technology  and  the  multimedia  Academic  Projects  Center,  put  me  into  conversation  with  composition  writ  large.  I  worked  with  students  from  across  the  curriculum  on  a  range  of  projects,  but  what  was  at  the  core  of  each  consultation  was  this  mindfulness  of  what  it  means  to  write.  Communications  presentations,  web  site  design  and  construction  projects,  first  year  writing  essays,  biology  lab  reports,  nursing  statements:  each  consultation  was  potential  to  work  alongside  student  writers  to  uncover  the  possibility  in  form  and  materiality,  relationships  to  established  knowledge  and  situation,  and  what  the  text  was  designed  to  do.  The  students  were  as  diverse  as  the  subject  matter  –  first  generation  college  students,  returning  students,  working  parents,  international  students  –  but  an  approach  of  making  visible  not  only  what  composed  a  text,  but  how  and  why  choices  were  made,  made  writing  a  dynamic  process  in  the  making.  This  was  a  focus,  for  me,  on  demystifying  writing  to  reveal  it  as  an  action,  so  that  it  didn’t  matter  if  the  student  with  whom  I  was  working  was  someone  I  saw  repeatedly,  or  someone  I  wouldn’t  likely  cross  paths  with  again,  they  might  see  beyond  writing  as  monolithic  and  see  their  potential  of  their  texts  in  composing.      Working  with  a  small  team  of  students  under  the  guidance  and  vision  of  a  professor,  I  assisted  in  the  creation  of  EM—Journal,  a  space  to  publish  student  writing  that  could  circulate  beyond  the  walls  of  the  classroom.  Students  (or  instructors)  submitted  work  to  represent  the  potential  in  texts  created  across  the  university.  As  a  group,  the  journal  traveled  to  a  local  conference  and  to  the  Conference  on  College  Composition  and  Communication  to  make  visible  the  possibility  in  such  a  student  publication  model.  Existing  on  the  web  it  is  low  of  cost,  able  to  circulate  with  pasting  of  a  hyperlink,  is  capable  of  connecting  on  other  platforms,  and  permits  an  interdisciplinary  view  of  what  it  means  to  write.  Further,  it  expands  notions  of  what  it  means  to  write  by  allowing  for  media  components  and  other  textual  features  that  cannot  be  captured  in  print.  Traces  of  this  work  were  published  in  Kairos,  "Lessons  in  Generative  Design,  Publishing,  and  Circulation:  What  EM-­‐Journal’s  First  Year  Has  Taught  Us",  as  representation  of  what  writing  can  do.      Composition  is  dynamic,  but  what  exists  in  flux  is  how  it  is  enacted  through  composing  —  to  challenge,  to  connect,  to  question,  and  to  relate.  Composition  becomes  taking  risks  and  carefully  reflecting  on  the  possibilities  and  limitations  of  composed  texts.  Perceiving  texts  of  student  creation  with  such  careful  contemplation  extends  into  how  students  interact  with  the  world,  an  activation  of  action  through  engagement  with  texts.  Considerations  of  materiality,  connectivity,  and  circulation  form  the  framework  of  my  pedagogical  materials  and  take  shape  from  and  respond  to  the  complex  and  dynamic  webs  in  which  we  as  global  citizens  and  agents  of  change  are  situated.  Within  the  composition  classroom  is  not  only  the  potential  to  create  texts,  but  the  potential  to  create  texts  that  circulate  and  shape  our  world(s).