In a report of a two-year study of seventh- and eighth-grade struggling readers, researchers employed a mixed research design to address the following guiding questions: (a) how do students' perceptions of the value and purpose of different media-rich projects, in comparison to more traditional pedagogy, relate to their levels of engagement in those projects; and (b) how do the media-rich activities help learners connect their various lived worlds and how do these activities transform their sense of competence and agency, particularly as competence has been defined in relation to traditional print-based activities? Findings indicated that participants found new literacies practices focusing on digital media more engaging than traditional practices. The class created tensions between the juxtaposed official sanctioning of these new literacies which promoted agency with traditional literacies that amplified incompetence and a deficit notion of performance.