Teachers often express to Marulyn Burns their worry about the need to "cover the curriculum." In response, she draws on one of her favorite quotes: "You don't want to cover a subject; you want to uncover it." This quote is from "The Having of Wonderful Ideas and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning" by Eleanor Duckworth (Teachers College Press, 1986), a book that's been on Burns' shelf for more than 25 years and one that she returns to time and again for inspiration and guidance. In this article, she shares that one of the most important steps in her own growth as a math teacher has been to understand the difference between covering and uncovering the curriculum. Having given a good deal of thought to how to incorporate this difference into her teaching practice, Burns states that often mathematics instruction gives students the erroneous notion that learning math is all about learning procedures, rather than making sense of ideas.