Becoming an effective literacy specialist means developing tools to support students’ and teachers’ reading and writing aspirations. They are thought to be self critical and respectful of their students’ and colleagues\u27 strengths, however, this is not easy. This case study examined the discourses and identities of a highly reflective white female teacher who was completing studies to become a literacy specialist. Critical discourse analysis was used as a theory and a method to examine the focal participant’s language-in-use to learn about how she made sense of her world, including her work with students and colleagues. This analysis suggested that she was a caring wife, mother, religious person, teacher, aspiring literacy specialist, and she was aware and critical of her privilege as a middle class white woman. Despite this, she drew on deficit-oriented language about helping the “other” in ways that distanced her from students and colleagues. This analysis suggests the need for researchers to continue to develop practices to enable literacy specialists, and all educators, to disrupt their deficit discourses and offer more inclusive and effective pedagogy
