This article focuses on teachers as decision makers with regard to curriculum and teaching. It explains how some teachers in the Pittsburgh area, tired of losing precious learning opportunities to the old prescribed curriculum, decided to provide their students with learning experiences in which the curriculum became a living shape; created by the children, teachers, and parents; rather than a static set of policies. It refl ects on what important things can be taught and learned in schools that will endure. We hope to explore the idea of what happens when a teacher’s curricular choices run against those ideas and habits put forth by schools and others involved in children’s schooling. As John Dewey reminds us, renewing self and community best occurs in a democratic society, in which justice and caring are central. These ideas only occur in schools where the central fi gures - the teachers - shape, foster, and enrich the lives that have been entrusted to them by the parents. The success and promise of these teachers is to expose children to a multitude of experiences that will help shape their life stories and one day enact those democratic ideals in everyday practice when they chose to vote, raise a child, live within a neighborhood, chose whether to attend religious services, and in particular, when they are asked to judge themselves as democratic citizens. Regardless of one’s background, place, or economic reality, the successful attainment of skills and fundamentals only occurs when the intellectual and emotional growth of that individual is respected, cared for, and enhanced, and this can only occur when the dedication, caring, talent, and intelligence of the teacher are allowed to fl ourish.