A continuing wave of attention focused on the development and adoption of teacher standards by national organizations and state agencies has, in most instances, overlooked the issue of personal relevance to teachers. Can teacher standards represent more than mere requirements for specified levels of performance and become associated with meaningful and relevant teaching events? Standards, whether they are promulgated by national organizations such as the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) or by state boards, do represent current norms of the profession. Our challenge is this: how do we overcome the didactic nature of standards and imbue these norms with a vitality that inspires and motivates the beginner? According to Bruner (1990) it is through narrative that we are able to "reiterate the norms of society without being didactic."(p.52) Standards can in fact provide a long overdue nomenclature for the development of true narratives, i.e., cases, of good teaching. We refer to this category of narratives as "good teaching/aspiration cases" because they deliberately present rich and detailed descriptions of innovative and or accomplished teaching. But this case type is far more than a portrait: it involves a story of how a teacher handles an instructional dilemma. In our current work developing such cases, each account is also carefully and deliberately related to one or more teaching standards.