Beginning teachers leave the profession at alarming rates. On average, nearly 50 percent of teachers leave the profession all together within their first five years (Smith & Ingersoll, 2004). With current policy discussions around alternative routes to teacher certification, there has also been debate about the impact of traditional pre-service teacher education. Additionally, there are frequent statements by beginning teachers about teacher education being inadequate, idealistic, and out of touch with reality. This article explores what it is like to become an elementary teacher in today's educational climate in which standardization and accountability increasingly influence what happens in classrooms across the country. Specifically, this article, in which a student teacher's story is analyzed and restoried, reveals the tensions involved in this transitional time of becoming a teacher. Part of a larger, longitudinal study designed to follow nine participants from teacher education through student teaching and into their first-year classrooms, this article focuses on one of those teachers, Erica (pseudonym), as she makes the transition from student to teacher. It illuminates the varying discourses student teachers must navigate as they determine what good literacy teaching and learning means to them. The study findings contribute to the understanding of challenges faced in university teacher education programs and K-12 schools, as well as some possibilities for how student teachers might be better supported, particularly those operating in reductive classrooms and forced to implement standardized curriculum.