Storied Lives Teaching Memoir Writing TH

FEATURE ARTICLE
Storied Lives: Teaching Memoir

Writing Through Multimodal
Mentor Texts
Emily Meixner, Anne Peel, Rachel Hendrickson, Lynn Szczeck, Kelly Bousum
Opportunities for teachers to study and design multimodal memoirs can empower
them to embrace a variety of media within the genre of autobiography.
I
t was an early Tuesday morning in April, and Emily sharing their own expertise (Meixner, 2014). Similarly,
and Anne (first and second authors) were gathered Emily and Anne continue to partner with classroom
with 11 local teachers (including coauthors Rachel, teachers so their own practice evolves, helping them be-
Lynn, and Kelly) around a seminar table in the college come more effective teacher educators for their preser-
library conference room. The room smelled of coffee vice English and literacy teachers.
and pastries. Emily and Anne advocate for the use of graphic
The energy was palpable. These teachers were on novels, young adult literature, and digital texts such
Emily and Anne’s college campus because they wanted as podcasts in their courses and PD partnerships.
to be here; of 14 possible Teachers as Scholars profes- Considerable research over the past decade has indi-
sional development (PD) sessions available through a cated that reading and writing nontraditional texts
professional schools partnership with the college, they such as these have value for engaging adolescent read-
had chosen this session, “Exploring the Conventions ers (Chisholm, Shelton, & Sheffield, 2017; Owens, 2013;
of Mixed-Media Storytelling.” All of the teachers were Rowsell & Kendrick, 2013; Smythe & Neufeld, 2010;
looking for new ideas and more ways to reach their Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010) and representing
students. They were ready to learn. They were ready to
write. They were ready to design.
Emily and Anne originally conceived of this PD EMILY MEIXNER is an associate professor in the
seminar as an opportunity to engage with local teach- English Department at The College of New Jersey,
ers in the kinds of writing that we ask of our secondary Ewing, USA; email meixner@tcnj.edu.
students. Emily and Anne both believe, as Kittle (2008) ANNE PEEL is an associate professor in the
a rgued, that “writing teachers must be writers” (p. 8) Department of Special Education, Language and
Literacy at The College of New Jersey, Ewing, USA:
and that writing pedagogy is improved when teachers
email peela@tcnj.edu.
have experience in writing in the genres that they teach.
RACHEL HENDRICKSON is an English teacher at
Before becoming education professors, Anne taught Mercer County Technical Schools, Trenton, NJ;
high school English for 14 years in both urban and sub- and an adjunct professor in the Writing Program
urban public schools; Emily taught high school English at The College of New Jersey, Ewing, USA; email
and French for four years in a small rural school. As rhendrickson@mcts.edu.
teacher educators, they both continue to partner ex- LYNN SZCZECK is a special education teacher at
Hunterdon Central Regional High School,
tensively with area teachers to research how a vari- Flemington, NJ, USA; email lszczeck@hcrhs.org.
ety of nontraditional texts can be used in secondary KELLY BOUSUM is an English teacher at Hunterdon
classrooms to engage adolescents. Effective PD needs Central Regional High School, Flemington, NJ, USA;
to invite teachers into communities of practice that email kbousum@hcrhs.org.
offer them ongoing opportunities to experiment while
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Vol. 62 No. 5 pp. 495–508 495 doi: 10.1002/jaal.935 © 2018 International Literacy Association
FEATURE ARTICLE
often marginalized identities (Gavigan & Albright, teachers who may not be as familiar with the visual or
2015; Kim, 2016; Park, 2016). Although many teachers audio modalities of the genre. The research objective
and scholars are clearly enthusiastic about embracing was to learn more about how teachers might take up
multimodal literacies (Hansen, 2012; Rice, 2012; Sewell these frameworks and compositional tools in their in-
& Denton, 2011) and developing instructional models structional practice after they had experienced them
for reading and writing multimodal text (Costello, 2012; firsthand as multimodal writers.
Meyer & Jiménez, 2017), the case for these texts may not In this article, we (the five authors) present find-
be as settled as this research suggests. ings that emerged from developing the PD seminar on
Access to resources and digital tools continues to teaching multimodal texts, and inquiry into how that
present obstacles in many schools (Rowsell, Morrell, & seminar inf luenced teaching practices. We begin by
Alvermann, 2017). Teachers who embrace multimodal exploring the current literature on multimodal design
texts may be hampered in teaching them effectively and adolescent engagement. In particular, we examine
because of limited knowledge of the genre or instruc- how multimodal concepts can be used to develop an in-
tional approaches (Lapp, Wolsey, Fisher, & Frey, 2011), structional lexicon for teachers. We then describe the
or criticism from parents, administrators, or even research design in three distinct phases: content analy-
students (Hansen, 2012). One type of multimodal text, sis of multimodal texts, seminar implementation, and
graphic novels, has been questioned by students as not teacher inquiry. Finally, we lay out several implications
legitimate for “real” reading (Moeller, 2016). The issue for classroom teachers. Throughout the article, we
of whether graphic texts are just a means to a practical share the frameworks and tools for analysis and compo-
end or have literary merit on par with more traditional sition of multimodal texts that teachers in the seminar
print novels remains an unresolved tension in the edu- found valuable.
cation community (Connors, 2010).
Another type of multimodal text, podcasts, tends to
be used in the classroom as a tool rather than studied Theoretical Framework
as a narrative genre. Most pedagogical approaches to The previous section detailed many of the obstacles that
podcasting involve student-generated podcasts for lan- inhibit teachers from fully incorporating multimodal
guage acquisition practice (Wilson, Chavez, & Anders, texts into their instruction. The following theories ex-
2012), reading f luency practice (Vasinda & McLeod, plain why it is essential to overcome these barriers and
2011), or content learning (Putman & Kingsley, 2009). support teachers in making space for autobiographical
Some studies have explored how composing podcasts multimodal text in the curriculum.
can support students’ writing development (Goodson &
Skillen, 2010; Owens, 2013), but the idea of reading auto-
biographical podcasts as a literary text has not emerged Designing Autobiography
in the research literature. Each semester, when Emily As teachers and teacher educators, we want to recen-
and Anne ask the students in their children’s literature ter the place of autobiographical writing in secondary
classes how many of them read graphic novels or lis- English classrooms and disrupt our own assumptions
ten to podcasts, only a smattering of hands goes up. In about what form those stories might take. Murray (1991)
Emily’s and Anne’s graduate courses, teachers who see contended that we all use writing to make meaning of
great potential for engaging younger readers with these our lives. “We become what we write” (p. 71), he argued,
texts often admit finding them difficult to read, and re- and “we make up our own history, our own legends, our
port an uncertainty about their literary merit. own knowledge by writing our autobiography” (p. 73).
The stories we tell about ourselves are fundamental to
who we are and what we understand about our experi-
Project Goals ences: They cannot help but shape our engagement with
The instructional goal for the PD seminar was to help one another and the world.
teachers overcome obstacles to teaching multimodal The need to share personal stories remains funda-
texts. Emily and Anne positioned them as high-quality mental even as the modalities available to craft stories
literature situated within the genre of autobiography have shifted. Kress argued (2003; Kress & van Leeuwen,
and memoir, rather than as a separate genre. Emily 1996) that the digital revolution has afforded far more
and Anne asked themselves what frameworks and tools resources for meaning making than language alone and
might support teachers’ growing knowledge of the lit- that this multimodality is changing the very logic of the
erary craft of a multimodal mentor text, particularly way in which we communicate. He called such textual
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Vol. 62 No. 5 496 March/April 2019 literacyworldwide.org
FEATURE ARTICLE
composition not writing or even speech, but design. their lives and identities through a visual and auditory
“Design asks, ‘what is needed now, in this one situation, composition” (Pytash, Kist, & Testa, 2017, p. 171).
with this configuration of purposes, aims, audience,
and with these resources, and given my interest in the
situation?’” (Kress, 2003, p. 49). The digital composi- Research Design
tional playground, however, is still largely restricted The PD seminar focused on the autobiographical story-
to young people’s out-of-s chool lives. School remains telling genre using multimodal writing media. Teachers
a place where the academic discourse of conventional built text familiarity by examining multimodal men-
printed text dominates (Applebee & Langer, 2011). We tor text less familiar to them and practiced compos-
argue that by studying the craft of contemporary mul- ing these texts themselves, creating mentor texts that
timodal autobiography, teachers and students can de- might inform and support their own instruction. Emily
velop sophisticated understandings of design and the and Anne felt it was critical that the teachers were not
affordances of digital media. only participants in this study but also partners in
authoring their findings through narrative inquiry.
Therefore, Emily and Anne employed content analysis
Multimodal Autobiography of the selected texts to construct a pedagogical frame-
As Emily and Anne designed the seminar, they sought work in phase 1 of the research; in phase 2, Emily and
out texts that demonstrated how authors designed Anne shared this framework with the seminar partici-
their personal stories through different kinds of media. pants; and in phase 3, Rachel, Lynn, and Kelly engaged
Within those media, they wanted to understand how in narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) to
different modes were used to construct meanings. make meaning of their learning.
A mode is a socially and culturally shaped resource for mak-

ing meaning. Image, writing, layout, speech, moving im- Phase 1: Multimodal Content Analysis
age are examples of modes, all used in learning resources.
Meanings are made in a variety of modes and always with During the initial phase of research to construct the PD
more than one mode. (Bezemer & Kress, 2008, p. 171) seminar, Emily and Anne conducted content analysis
(Hoffman, Wilson, Martínez, & Sailors, 2011) of several
For example, in one of the texts we used, Remember: The graphic novels, podcasts, photograph collections, and
Journey to School Integration by Toni Morrison (2004), other hybrid texts. The purpose of the content analysis
she recasts historical photographs from the fight for was to develop a multimodal analytic framework that
school integration as memoir, imagining with words could both serve as a way to understand the narrative
what the people represented in the photographs might relations across modes in a text and provide a practi-
have been thinking and experiencing in the moment. cal pedagogical application for classroom instruction.
Like Murray (1991), Morrison challenges us to consider Emily and Anne pulled from the concepts developed by a
the ways in which acts of memory are always acts of variety scholars and artists (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996;
imagination; the truth of our lives, which we strive to McCloud, 1994; Yang, 2008) to construct a lexicon of vi-
capture in autobiography, is always an act of curation sual design (see Figure 1 for a sample). Emily and Anne
and therefore fictionalization. relied on this lexicon as they coded excerpts from a va-
The challenging nature of multimodal autobiogra- riety of multimodal texts, including the four eventually
phy is precisely why these texts deserve space in English assigned to the seminar participants (see Figure 2). In
classrooms, not just as hooks for engagement but as the selections, Emily and Anne attempted to represent a
deeply complex literary works. As Yang (2008) argued, maximum variation in targeted reader age level, type of
graphic novels are potent teaching tools because they personal narrative, layout, and modalities. In addition,
bridge visual and textual media; teachers can use multi- either Anne or Emily had used each of these texts as a
modal text to engage in deep literary analysis, exploring mentor text with K–12 students or preservice teachers.
both traditional literary elements (e.g., plot, character- Emily and Anne also coded several audio memoirs
ization, theme, conflict, symbolism) and elements of vi- from two podcast series, The Moth and Snap Judgement.
sual design (e.g., panel size, framing, coloration, graphic These podcast series were chosen because they include
weight) or the audio landscape. Further, composing short personal narratives spoken aloud by a single au-
multimodal narratives provides “students with oppor- thor. Anne selected specific narratives based on posi-
tunities to engage in a sophisticated rhetorical process tive student feedback during a research project that she
as they consider the ways that they must represent completed in a local middle school.
FEATURE ARTICLE
Figure 1
Excerpt From the Visual Design Lexicon
Note. The color figure can be viewed in the online version of this article at http://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
As Emily and Anne coded the texts, they found that in multimodal theory (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996;
the different collection of modalities in each one lent it- McCloud, 1994; Yang, 2008) became a framework to
self to different categories of codes. While coding text share with the teachers participating in the PD seminar.
that was primarily drawn (e.g., El Deafo by Cece Bell,
2014), the codes that emerged were primarily questions
about structure and designer’s intent: Why did the il- Phase 2: PD Seminar
lustrator use these frames? Why is there a gutter here? The seminar took place on two consecutive Tuesdays in
Why is there a thought bubble and not a speech bubble? conference rooms on campus. All of the 14 seminars in
When coding the podcasts, Emily and Anne adopted a the Teachers as Scholars program are open to teachers
much more reactive stance, attending closely to their from all content areas. This seminar, perhaps because
responses to compositional elements specific to an au- of its focus on literacy, was self-selected primarily by
dio landscape: the effects of pauses, music cues, pacing English teachers. Eight high school English teachers,
of the utterance of words, and drawn-out syllables. two special education teachers (also working in high
The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan With school English classrooms), and one middle school com-
Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier puter and literacy teacher participated. The two-d ay
Lefèvre, and Frédéric Lemercier (2009) was perhaps seminar was divided roughly into four sessions, each
the most hybridized text to code. The narrative is con- focusing on a different medium of memoir. An overview
structed through Lefèvre’s photographs and negatives, of the seminar activities follows.
as well as the drawn images and words of his coauthors.
The intersection of these three modes forced Emily Medium 1: Verse Memoirs. The first mentor text that
and Anne not only to navigate the unfolding events session participants encountered was the verse mem-
of Lefèvre’s journey but also to try to find meaning in oir Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (2014),
the relation between word and image, photograph and from which Emily selected six poems to read aloud.
drawing, space and absence. Emily and Anne looked The teachers quickly annotated the poems, identify-
at the relation among those modes and generated sev- ing words, phrases, or specific lines that enabled them
eral categories (see Figure 3). The coded concepts based to see, hear, or feel what Woodson was experiencing.
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Figure 2
PD Seminar Resources
Emily then asked the teachers to write from one of the Medium 2: Graphic Memoirs . Once we had drafted
poems: share a similar story, write from a word or line our autobiographical scenes, the group turned to a
that served to spark a memory, or embed some of their graphic novel medium that employed more visual mo-
own content (their own story) into Woodson’s structure, dalities. Because of its popularity with younger readers
perhaps even borrowing some of her language. Emily and its availability in both prose and graphic formats,
explained that we would revisit this brief memoir scene Emily s elected short excerpts from Neil Gaiman’s (2008)
in multiple modalities as the sessions progressed (see graphic novel adaptation of his book Coraline to model
Figure 4 for an example of the memoir scene that Emily the language of reading pictures that had emerged
wrote during this activity). from Emily and Anne’s content coding and to highlight
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Figure 3
PowerPoint Slide From the PD Seminar With Analytical Codes
the differences between the two versions of the text. the photograph. We examined the relation between pho-
Then, we all engaged in close text readings of El Deafo tographs and other modalities (words, layout, and draw-
and Jimmy Gownley’s (2014) The Dumbest Idea Ever! ing) in Remember and The Photographer. The categories
and practiced applying the visual lexicon to our read- of relations and the language of visual design that had
ing. Following this conversation, we turned back to our emerged in Emily and Anne’s coding framed our close
memoir drafts and redesigned them as visual text in se- readings of these texts. Emily modeled her own photo-
quential frames (see Figure 5). graphic memoir (see Figure 7), a series of images she had
taken on her cell phone that she had curated to depict a
Medium 3: Podcasts. After delving deeply into the con- day in her life, and the group discussed how the images
ventions of visual storytelling, we then added a third and compositional choices (e.g., image placement, size)
modality, orality, and discussed auditory storytelling privileged particular aspects of her narrative that she
techniques used in narrative podcasts. We examined the believed to be most salient, such as time, motherhood,
personal narratives of Glynn Washington and other sto- gender, and work. Emily and Anne then invited all the
rytellers in the Snap Judgment and The Moth podcasts. participants to compose a memoir by collecting and cu-
Anne played the files repeatedly to engage in close text rating their own photographs.
listening, with increasing attention to elements of craft
such as vocal maneuvers: repeating the same phrase for
emphasis, dramatic pausing, and stretching out a syl- Phase 3: Teacher Narrative Inquiry
lable. She supported close text listening for descriptive During the final phase of the project, Emily and Anne
techniques by asking participants to sketch what they employed convenience sampling (Creswell, 2007) to re-
were visualizing while the podcast played. Finally, Emily cruit teachers, inviting everyone from the PD seminar
and Anne invited the participants to redesign their mem- to contribute to our research. Three of the teachers—
oir drafts a second time as an audio text. Emily and Anne Rachel, Lynn, and Kelly—responded, volunteering to
helped them navigate the program Audacity and some ba- coauthor this article and serve as coresearchers for this
sic microphone and spit guard equipment (see Figure 6). phase of the study. Using narrative inquiry (Clandinin &
Connelly, 2000), they reflected on how their experiences
Medium 4: Photographic and Artifactual Memoirs. in the seminar informed their subsequent teaching.
Having composed in textual, visual, and auditory modes, Rachel, in her 10th year of teaching, teaches all levels of
Emily and Anne introduced one last mode of storytelling: high school English in a small health science academy
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Figure 4
Emily’s Memoir Scene
in a diverse, county vocational technical school district. Because Emily and Anne built the seminar around
Lynn and Kelly teach at the same large, suburban high autobiography, they decided to use narrative inquiry
school. Lynn, a 36-year veteran, has taught the 11th- (Ritchie & Wilson, 2000) for the third phase of our re-
grade English resource center and inclusion classes for search. As a research method, narrative inquiry aligns
the past 27 years. Kelly has been teaching high school for powerfully with the seminar’s emphasis on story as
25 years and currently teaches ninth-grade English and a a tool that not only gives voice but also makes mean-
public speaking elective. ing, in this instance, by fusing the personal and the
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Figure 5
Graphic Novel Panels
professional in reflective narrative. It is often through 2. Was there a type of text (graphic novel, podcast, etc.) or an
the use of narrative that teachers “author their own de- instructional practice that you found particularly appropri-
velopment” (Ritchie & Wilson, 2000, p. 1). ate or intriguing for use with your student writers? Why?
To facilitate the development of these narratives, 3. What was it like to be asked to create your own text after
several months after the conclusion of the PD seminar, encountering the mentor texts we shared with you? In
Emily and Anne emailed the following questions to what ways, if any, did it shape your thinking about your
Rachel, Lynn, and Kelly: own teaching practice?
1. How did the seminar inform your thinking about the use Several weeks later, Anne met with the three
of multimedia and multimodal texts in your reading and teachers as a group to discuss their reflections on the
writing instruction? prompts. The teachers brought notes and some of their
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Figure 6 memoir artifacts from the seminar, and Anne facili-

Podcast Recording Equipment tated the discussion. Over the course of the discussion,
she documented the teachers’ comments and then
read the notes back to the group. The group c ollectively
identified themes that were emerging across everyone’s
experiences, such as sources of inspiration and anxiety,
opportunities for differentiation and engagement, and
experiences of empathy and freedom.
With these themes in mind as a framework, Emily
and Anne invited the three teachers to write a brief
personal narrative that documented their evolving
relationship to teaching multimodal memoirs. Emily
and Anne incorporated the narratives (which varied in
length from two to three pages) into this article’s manu-
script and sent it to Rachel, Lynn, and Kelly so they could
revise and edit their narratives and offer feedback on
the manuscript. After several cycles of revision, Emily
and Anne excerpted the main sections of the teachers’
vignettes that highlighted the original themes. Rachel,
Lynn, and Kelly’s narratives follow in the next section.
Teacher Narratives
Rachel
Note. The color figure can be viewed in the online version of this article at The path to creating assignments had always felt
http://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
straightforward to me: Determine the desired outcome,
Figure 7
Emily’s Photo-Essay
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create the assignment, align to the standards, make a to narratives crafted by others. I had already done a pod-
handout with a cute border, and assign it. I always ex- cast in preparations for this lesson, but nothing could
pected my students to perform and produce because, completely describe the technological glitches one finds
well, I’m the teacher and I assigned it! This had always when exploring new ways to learn! All the things I had
seemed to be effective, too: Students would invariably learned in the controlled environment of the workshop
submit their work, and I would grade what appeared were helpful, yes, but once we entered the library, it all
to be the best evidence of their potential as writers. sort of fell from my grasp. Fortunately, I had activated
However, I never truly considered how the students the support network of staff at the instructional media
felt about these assignments until I had to walk in their center in advance, so they were ready for us. Over the
shoes and spend a day, or at least a couple hours, as a years, this digital immigrant has learned a few survival
high school student. tricks, and today’s trick was to let the students teach me
The PD seminar culminated in attendees creating a thing or two. Someone pulled out a cellphone after see-
their own mixed-media pieces. How quickly I had forgot- ing the disgust on my face and said, “Look Mrs. S! We can
ten how it feels to be a student! When I received the as- podcast with our phones!” “OK,” I replied rather sheep-
signment, I felt incredibly anxious. What would I write? ishly as they all began reading their handwritten narra-
How would I incorporate another type of medium, other tives into their cellphones. An interesting thing began to
than text? What if it didn’t accurately reflect my expe- happen next. The students began correcting themselves
rience? What if nobody else liked it? It was then that I as they read their stories, something I couldn’t get them
realized that this anxiety is very real for students, too. to do independently with word processor and paper. Not
I had been assuming that students were machines pro- only did they edit themselves rather naturally, but they
grammed to produce work at my whim, when in reality, were also thinking metacognitively about their stories
they were likely struggling with uncomfortable feelings and how what they really meant should sound.
of vulnerability, just as I now was. I recognized that to The other excellent thing that came from our pod-
truly support my students, I needed to think not just as casting journey was that the kids are all enthused about
a teacher but as a student as well. going to the instructional media center to utilize tech-
This year, I look forward to exploring memoir with my nologies and using them in other ways. This puts the kids
11th-grade creative writing students in a way that I have into a great space because they feel ownership of their
not done in the past. I plan to use art, portions of graphic learning, and it sets a goal for us all. For me as the teacher,
novels, clips from podcasts, and photo stories to show I need to keep stepping forward, developing the sequen-
students that the methods in which they write about tial steps to the next lesson, removing myself from my
their experiences can be remarkably varied and that comfort zone. For the students, they’re finding and ex-
they should explore options that enable them to write in pressing their writing voices in the digital world. My next
whatever form allows each of their unique voices to come lessons will use tone and setting, giving the students the
through. I am excited to see what my students create us- tools that podcasting has to offer to explore the manipu-
ing the various media we will explore throughout the year. lation of language and how it can be personalized.
Lynn Kelly
After attending the PD seminar in which we explored Inspired by the PD seminar, I set out to breathe new
the use of podcasting, this seemed like a natural mar- life into the narrative unit in my ninth-g rade English
riage between narration and revision. But, how would I class. I took exercises that used to fit neatly into my
I get the attention of the 11th-g rade resource center speaking and listening categories and mixed them into
English class? I took them to the library to begin a unit my narrative unit. Instead of assigning isolated pod-
designed to involve my students in the writing/revising casting assignments, separate graphic story creations,
process by using podcasting as a means of them hearing and specific moviemaking projects, I offered these as
their written language. I called it “Changes in Latitude, mixed-modality extensions of the students’ narratives,
Changes in Attitude” because I wasn’t sure whether and the results were extraordinary. Although read-
the students enjoyed the use of the technology itself or ing aloud and recording drafts had always been a part
if they enjoyed the fact that we left our classroom and of the drafting and revision process, listening to and
went to the instructional media center. analyzing podcasts of narratives, such as Mike McGee’s
Of course, this wasn’t on day 1. They had already “My Favorite Pants,” inspired students to improve their
been introduced to the genre of podcasting by listening own stories. The level of scrutiny and revision to their
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essays was impressive and exciting. They annotated for discovered that the chance to reposition all of us from
areas that would be read with subtlety, parts where they teachers and teacher educators to readers and writers
would speed up or slow down pace, words that would be engendered in us greater empathy for our students.
accentuated or read more loudly, and places where they For Rachel in particular, the experience of being
would pause. I provided some links to basic audio appli- asked to write was both startling and enlightening. As
cations, such as Mic Note (https://www.micnote.audio/), she revisited this experience in her narrative, she com-
and asked students to create soundtracks for their own mented on how being positioned as a writer made her
stories. I have never had so many students ask if they feel like a student again: uncertain and, to her surprise,
could revise again…and again. disempowered. Even though she had identified and
Bringing their narratives to life with sound was a crafted an initial scene, she wondered about all aspects
success, but we did not stop there. Next, we explored of her process. As she recounted her anxiety, she real-
telling our stories with pictures. I have always been an ized that her students shared these feelings.
advocate of graphic novels, and I offer many titles in Rachel’s experience challenged her to see her stu-
my classroom library. Students are encouraged to read dents and writing in a new way. Her students were not
them independently and in small literature circles, but just fulfilling assignment expectations; instead, they
this time we turned to the collection as mentor texts were makers or what Kress (2003) might call designers.
for creating our own. Students loved this. They stud- She also discovered that the experience of her own writ-
ied some basic graphic storytelling tools (e.g., panels, ing anxiety created greater empathy for her students. In
frames, speech balloons, thought bubbles, gutters) the seminar, as we talked and collaborated, she began
and then went back to their narrative essays to pull to understand that writing can be a social rather than
the salient parts for their graphic versions. I showed isolated activity. She wanted to create a community of
them a few online graphic story applications, such as writers with her students.
Stripgenerator (http://stripgenerator.com/) and Pixton Several months later, Lynn was still grappling with the
Comic Maker (https://www.pixton.com/), and they went tension between multimodal and standardized forms, al-
to town. The level of consideration and collaboration though she was amazed by her students’ increased writ-
was thrilling. I figured the students might be growing ing productivity and willingness to share their work as
tired of their narratives, but I was wrong. they developed their podcasts. The autobiographical sto-
After creating and sharing podcasts and graphic ries that her students wanted to narrate were personal
stories, students were eager to turn their creations into and raw, and she found herself puzzling through her
digital narratives. I showed them a few video-m aking discomfort and her acknowledgment that multimodal
programs, including WeVideo (https://www.wevideo. forms were appealing to and engaging her students in
com/) and GoAnimate (now called Vyond: https://www. ways that traditional writing assignments had not.
vyond.com/), and once again, they were driven to create Becoming familiar with podcasting as a composi-
new versions of their narratives. tional tool was particularly important for Lynn, whose
students had been listening to podcasts in her resource
room English class. For her, podcasting provided new
Discussion opportunities for her students to revise and allowed
Engagement, Anxiety, and Empathy them to take the lead when they encountered tech-
As Rachel, Lynn, and Kelly reflected on the PD semi- nological issues as they prepared and recorded their
nar and composed and edited their narratives, several narratives. As she had hoped, multimodal storytelling
themes emerged that cut across all three. Their expe- resulted in revision, but it occurred more organically
riences in composing in different modes led all three than she ever expected, and it required her to learn
teachers to consider how multimodal writing tasks new composition strategies alongside her students.
might support more engaged writing for their students Lynn’s experience reflects the findings of Owens (2013),
while still being aware of how all acts of composition Rowsell and Kendrick (2013), and others that multi-
can create anxiety for writers. Another key theme that modal texts can powerfully engage adolescent students,
emerged was the concern for students’ autonomy; in particularly those whose voices have been marginalized
different ways, each of the teachers was inspired by the (Gavigan & Albright, 2015; Kim, 2016; Park, 2016), but
multimodal memoirs to consider how more personal that composing with new media may present additional
freedom to choose not only which text but also which barriers to access (Rowsell et al., 2017).
type of text to read and write might better meet the needs When she enrolled in the seminar, Kelly strongly
of adolescent students. Overall, Rachel, Lynn, and Kelly identified as a writer immersed in a workshop culture.
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What was most valuable for her, therefore, was the way participants, podcasting seemed to cause the most
in which the two days pushed her pedagogically and anxiety, and Rachel and Lynn were reminded that com-
shifted her ideas about what counted as both text and posing confidently in an unfamiliar medium requires
writing instruction. The seminar functioned as in- practice and time.
spiration, and she found herself thinking specifically To assist teachers as they develop reading and writ-
about podcasts and instructional uses of audio text. As ing fluency in new media, developing a lexicon through
a writer, she believes that freedom and engagement are which they can learn to teach writing as design is es-
inextricable from each other. Discovering more modes sential. Throughout the PD seminar, design was part
for meaning making means more opportunities for her of participants’ conversation in each medium. Initially,
students: more freedom for them to make more authen- however, Emily and Anne were more focused as read-
tic choices. ers on a meaning-making process that McCloud (1994)
In her narrative, Kelly wrote, “We are storytellers: called closure: the work that the reader does between
always have been and always will be. What has changed one cell and the next. However, as the group read the
are the compositional modes at our disposal.” In their photo-essays, Emily and Anne noticed how authors who
reflective narratives, all three teachers commented on compose with photographs also partner with the image
the impact that exploring varied modes of writing had or to find the story—to fictionalize like Morrison or to me-
would have on their instruction. For Rachel, new modali- morialize like Lefèvre. Thus, when it came time to craft
ties meant future instructional possibilities. For Lynn, visual memoirs, the design aspects of the assignment
working in a variety of modalities changed both her and were highlighted. Emily and Anne became aware of how
her students’ engagement. Kelly immediately returned the lexicon of multimodal concepts emerging from the
to her school to try out new ideas. She also replicated the seminar contributed to our reading and our writing;
instructional methods she experienced in the seminar how participants might teach writing as design became
by layering her student writers’ familiarity with differ- visible.
ent modalities, using one mode as a point of entry for the Although Rachel’s, Lynn’s, and Kelly’s insights were
next. Once she and her students had composed with text certainly specific to our shared experience in this semi-
and audio, they moved into visual modes using images nar, they highlight the range of emotional and intellec-
and photographs. tual responses that occur when teachers are confronted
with unfamiliar modes and supported to engage them
Implications: Learning to Teach Design purposefully. Not only were all the authors challenged
to write, think, and teach differently, but Rachel, Lynn,
At the conclusion of this project, the authors were
and Kelly were also able to translate this work into much-
struck by several realizations:
needed meaning-making writing opportunities for their
■ We must provide teachers with opportunities to students. We also see the need for more opportunities in
practice as multimodal writers, which can reshape research for teachers to engage in multimodal narrative
their practice as writing teachers. inquiry. Emily and Anne developed this study in a tra-
ditional monomodal format, but there is great research
■ We need to recognize the anxiety that teachers face
potential in future studies that might invite teachers
when confronting multimodal texts with which they
to draw, photograph, or record their self-reflections on
might be unfamiliar.
practice.
■ We can support teachers’ ability to teach writing as While making the case for autobiography, Murray
an act of design by equipping them with a clear lexi- (1991) argued, “I do not think we should move away
con of multimodal concepts. from personal or reflective narrative…but closer to it;
I do not think we should limit reflective narrative to a
For teachers to integrate opportunities for multi- single genre” (p. 73). Becoming familiar with and teach-
modal mentor writing into their curriculum, they must ing our students to share their stories using diverse
have opportunities to compose as multimodal writers. media while attending to the interrelations among
They must become familiar with multimodal mentor autobiography, modality, and design can make us un-
texts and create them in supportive workshop environ- comfortable, but developing tools for close reading and
ments where they can draft, revise, risk, and grow. As composing with multimodal texts can also inspire and
Rachel and Lynn admitted, new tools and a new lexicon empower teachers to invite autobiographical writing
of multimodal concepts can result in heightened anxi- into their instruction in powerful ways. As teachers
ety, a finding supported by Lapp et al. (2011). For session and students come to envision autobiography not solely
FEATURE ARTICLE
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