In this article, the author shares her experience teaching at Rita Cannan Elementary, in Reno, Nevada, and describes how she and her colleagues teach lessons on citizenship education that are part of their social studies program. She describes an approach she used, which focused on student leadership rather than teacher intervention, that led to an improvement in a student's behavior. It takes time to teach children self-discipline when they are confronted with new freedoms in the classroom and in society. Thus the author tries to run the classroom like a democracy so that students may learn the knowledge and practice the skills that will enable them to make the most appropriate choices. By using school incidents as examples for discussion, students begin to use their critical thinking skills, asking probing questions to get to the heart of an issue. (Contains 9 notes.)