Teachers make innumerable decisions in their classrooms, taking into account students’ readiness for a particular topic, their cultural background, and their learning profile. However, the teacher’s role—taking care of high numbers of individual students along with the classroom as a whole—can be stressful and discouraging. The current educational conversation leads teachers toward seeing students as test scores as opposed to individual human beings. I would argue that excellent teachers know their students—knowing that goes beyond grades from the previous year. I also argue for high quality, responsive teaching—teaching that acknowledges the needs of individuals and requires teachers to respond in some effective way. This project was a qualitative case study (Dyson & Genishi, 2005) of one fifth-grade classroom teacher as she strove to be responsive to her students. It documented how the relationships she built with her students affected and were affected by her responsive teaching.