Living “In-The-Making”

Abstract

In 2000, Janet Miller published a piece in English Education entitled, “English Education in-the-making” in which she elaborated a conception of English education as a means for considering the ways our selves, our knowledges, our instructional practices, our research, and our field at large are always “framed, influenced, and changed by specific and differing contexts” (p. 35). This chapter aims to reflect on Janet’s conception of “in-the-making” as a foundation for self-study/autobiography and curriculum inquiry that interrogates the relations between self, language, and difference. The author also seeks to live in the concept as she engages the “sweaty fight for meaning” (p. 35) in her own daily work as a Literacy Specialist; a role dictated by a system of Response to Intervention. Living “in-the-making” opens spaces to question literacy and literacy practices—questions that challenge fixed and categorical notions of students as readers and writers; questions that push on our assumptions of difference in literacy; and questions that encourage us to embrace uncertainties. In doing so, she continue to engage Janet’s ever-present question of “so what?” and her ever-present admonition to “keep going!”