Of course there are few things more satisfying than arriving towards the conclusion of a term and finding all of the pieces fitting closely together – not that I have doubted Hogan’s approach to the course from the beginning.
With approximately forty pages of writing to do for my two literature courses, however, I feel immensely grateful for the “mini-deadlines” for the teaching portfolio’s contents over the course of the semester and for the fact that I took each assignment seriously enough to make a significant first draft. Having done much of the mental work in the first place, what is left for me to do then is fine-tuning and some revising. I expect most of the mental work to occur in revising my teaching philosophy, but now having done the readings, both pedagogical and theoretical, I can with some confidence better characterize and ground my approach to teaching composition, and what the act of composition means to me as not just a scholar and a teacher, but as a self-reflecting writer.
I’m rather excited for the tapestry that is to emerge in my teaching portfolio. It is just a matter now of having enough energy to see it through.
Image source: The Unicorn in Captivity (from the Unicorn Tapestries). (1495-1505). At the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.
metastasis and dissertations 