This new text is an exploration of classroom practices that demonstrates how a teacher captures the moral and academic aspirations of young children.

While there are texts on moral education and on how to engage children in meaningful learning (e.g., the thematic or project approach), this text is unique because it blends the two in a readable and engaging fashion.

The pedagogy assumes that young children naturally want to improve and have the capacity to improve—both academically and morally—but that these desires and capacities emerge only when the teacher selects unusually grand goals and themes that tap and hold the imagination and desires of children.

This text takes readers into the classroom where they will see firsthand how the teacher is both directive—asking leading questions, offering suggestions and alternatives, and creating dissonance—and is non-directive—inviting children to pose their own questions and answers and to try out their own solutions.

This classroom narrative focuses on the experience of one teacher over several years. The theory and pedagogy are woven into the description of the children's daily lives at school. The text supplements a traditional research-based text by translating theory into action. The reader, apprentice or veteran, becomes familiar with, and is inspired by, an account of deep dialogue and meaningful learning over three separate school years.