Schwab (1978) argued that curriculum emerged in the commonplaces of teacher, learner, subject matter and milieu. It was in these four frames that I narratively explored my own development as an English teacher and curriculum planner around Shakespeare's work, particularly The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. In this narrative, I relate four narrative fragments that focus on my learning about Shakespeare as a secondary student, a university student, a novice teacher, and a more experienced educator. My major learning about English/language arts content and standards is that I do not conceive of standards as top-down mandates only but rather as part of a larger social and political context. My narrative fragments reveal that standards about what to teach and how, come from a variety of sources besides official curriculum documents and that negotiating these various standards requires teachers to think and reflect in complex ways.