ABSTRACT
This chapter explores social practices of personhood and literacy through a particular lens of time in hopes of widening the aperture of who is seen as fully human in schools. It offers a theoretical perspective of emergent possibility by bringing F. Erickson’s discussion of the distinction between Kronos and Kairos constructions of time into conversation with D. Bloome and F. Beauchemin’s theory of personhood as languaged. The chapter reviews literacy as units of time that then constrain the possibilities of being human within schooling contexts. It examines classroom literacy event to explore some possibilities this theoretical conversation affords and deals with implications for literacy theory and research. In efforts to prepare students for accountability testing and to align with federal and state literacy standards, many school districts have laid out calendars of literacy objectives for teachers to follow. Literacy seems to have experienced “overwind-ing,” or the squishing of “really big timescales into much smaller or nonexistent ones”.
