Written by: Carol Doyle-Jones, Niagara University, United States

Abstract: During the beginning of an online class in a teacher education program, an exchange about a holiday and the associated family traditions prompted the author to share the haphazard pieces of her family’s lives as they were framed through the screen. Favouring the frameworks of New Literacy Studies and New Literacies, this essay showcases the connections made between what is on our shelves when teaching, while in dialogue with a fellow educator. As dialogic partners we contemplate what Pahl and Rowsell (2020) share through living literacies, what literacies and identities could be among the complexities of influencing semiotic factors. While exploring the social practices of everyday life we see our changing roles through the multimodal and multifaceted ways we frame ourselves as educators. This visual essay explores “what’s on the shelf”, how shelfies and identities intersect, and the everyday life of the shelf through the frame of the screen.

Keywords: shelfies, dialogic partners, educator identities, digital spaces, semiotics, pandemic pedagogy