This study examines the instructional steps I took, based on gaps between what was happening in a graduate literacy class I taught and what I had intended to happen. This study describes the ways that I re-imagined the class and what came about when I created a pedagogical approach that featured multi-genre inquiry. I define inter-discursivity as a signal of learning (i.e. when traces of language from one genre spill over into the language of other genres), and I searched for examples of this overlapping language in data. In doing so, I found that the multi-genre approach led to moments of inter-discursivity as teachers extended their understandings by appropriating language from one genre into another.