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Going beyond my department and institution, I pivot back to my own peer and personal networks for PD. The majority of pedagogical strategies I use when teaching multimodal writing come from chatting with my cohort friends or seeing what other instructors are doing on social media. While brainstorming ways to engage Composition II students more with their archival research projects, I designed an assignment where they put together a website exhibition to share their work with friends and family. I applied the knowledge from my past career to draft a website template so my students could go in to edit and put their own spin on it. In my personal life, I have always written in a journal and recognize the cognitive value of physically writing in notebooks. This semester I purchased small notebooks for my students to enact Commonplace Books, a way for them to intellectually interact with texts by recording quotes, ideas, and any other information, including sketches, comics, magazine clippings, and photos. I try to gain perspective from how multiple modes can impact a student’s experience in FYC. As always, I spoke transparently about my strategies and informed the students that this Commonplace Book activity may be a total flop, but experimenting with our ways of writing is worth the risks.
As Chen’s (2021) national survey informs us, most instructors rely on their own training efforts and personal networks to teach multimodal composition, with 10% reporting that they receive training from their institutions. This poses a serious question about the ways which English and Writing and Rhetoric departments respond to what is going on in the field. They are codifying it into the curriculum without providing ongoing development opportunities that are accessible to all instructors, including GTAs. The reliance on personal support networks requires extra labor and assumes that individuals have access to some expertise.