Professional stories that live within multiple retellings throughout one's career can, when the teller analyzes them, be useful in unearthing influential pedagogical assumptions. The author retells a classroom story, examines unacknowledged fears rooted within the story's elements, and uses a five-point framework for analyzing related assumptions within such critical incidents: presence of claims, presence of challenges to claims, opportunities for revisiting claims, discovery of roots of practices within the assumptions/claims, and realization of subsequent pedagogical and professional choices for action. Furthermore, the author links the identification and analysis of critical incidents to the pursuit of critically reflective teaching.