In this essay three teacher educators explore their individual pandemic-imposed online “zippered borders” (Fine 1994 p. 71). Their reflections on navigating the challenges that the past two years created for them and their students resulted in a deeper understanding of the hyphens of teaching various literacy and English language arts methods courses in a virtual setting. The authors’ respective journeys and collaborative sense-making of their commonalities provide critical insights and perhaps some inspiration for others to reflect and consider how our best efforts as teacher educators are still always in the hyphens.

In this essay Christian Z. Goering shares his reaction to the new NCTE Standards for the Initial Preparation of Teachers of English Language Arts 7–12 (Initial Licensure) as co-chair of the 2019–2021 NCTE Steering Committee for the ELA 7–12 Preparation Standards past chair of ELATE and current teacher educator. Believing that these standards have the ability to challenge and change what it means to teach ELA he considers how students faculty and the field can take up and embrace antiracist/antibias instruction. Editor’s note: Goering originally contributed this piece in October 2020 then revised it in October 2021 in preparation for the official release of the new standards.

In this article the three co-chairs of the 2019–2021 Steering Committee for the English Language Arts (ELA) 7–12 Preparation Standards share the history development and meaning of the recently adopted 2021 NCTE Standards for the Initial Preparation of Teachers of English Language Arts 7–12 (Initial Licensure).

Drawing from the Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English Language Arts Classroom as well as prior scholarship on digitally mediated communication rhetorical studies and composition assessment and digital literacies this theoretical article presents a framework for creating and assessing digital multimodal compositions. The Interconnected Framework for Assessment of Digital Multimodal Composition conceptualizes digital multimodal composing through three interconnected and layered domains: audience mode and meaning and originality. Though the three domains are defined individually they are inextricably linked within the recursive processes and products of digital multimodal composing to contribute to intended meaning. The authors describe and justify the domains present assessment considerations and conclude with implications for practice and suggestions for designing assessments relevant to context and task.

Literacy normativities reinforce the colonial racist and anti-queer underpinnings of English education and today these normativities are propelled by the English teacher imagination. To render these normativities visible this study traces the affective reader responses of an inquiry community of queer educators and reveals normative reading practices that animate how English teachers imagine and feel their classroom worlds. In particular ordinary affects—those that are subtly felt and often overlooked—spotlight interpretive norms and normative feelings that hide the field’s ongoing commitments to colonization racism queerphobia and more. Contributing to Critical English Education (CEE) this article concludes by calling for multiple prisms of interpretation to dismantle literacy normativities in English education and ELA.

In this qualitative study the authors explore how preservice teachers select read and imagine teaching representations of disability in young adult literature. Adding disability to the list of diversity categories can be problematic in that thinking about disability as a singular identity group ignores abling or disabling contexts and diversity within disability (Davis 2011; Watson 2002). However findings indicate that preservice teachers may only see disability in the context of special education if representations of disability are not explicitly applied in English coursework using a disability studies lens (Dunn 2014).

In this lyrical reflective essay in four parts I ruminate on teaching as poetics the teaching of contemporary poetry the teaching of histories of settler colonialism and antiblackness inherent in curriculum design and teaching as adoration. I practice teaching to learn how to move with and love my students to encourage them to move with and love their future students. I then reflect on my practice after and in between meditation so the poetics here is an invitation to meditation.