Bricolage is the make-do activities a handyperson employs while working. The bricoleur is one who tinkers with the materials at hand. Teachers can act as a bricoleur by continually cobbling materials together in the course of teaching. Such intellectual activity requires flexibility and the capacity to work with what is given while being responsive to emerging understandings. At a time when matching instructional practices to external standards is more the norm, making do with what is given may feel like an odd fit. Yet in instruction bricolage teachers construct learning opportunities in order to open spaces of possibility, not to convey some prescribed meaning. (Contains 4 figures.)