All students should be provided with opportunities to develop conceptual understanding prior to procedural fluency. To develop students' conceptual understanding, teachers must learn such skills as how to select, plan, and enact cognitively demanding tasks (CDT) and to evaluate evidence of student learning. Therefore, teachers need opportunities to develop these skills to maximize their students' learning outcomes. Starting with a well-designed CDT is essential. In other words, before planning the enactment of a task, teachers should analyze the task and make revisions to align it with student learning goals that promote conceptual understanding. In this article, the authors share an example of a prospective secondary mathematics teacher designing, planning, and reflecting on the enactment of a CDT before addressing procedural fluency. The setting is a school in which 92 percent of the students scored below proficient on the 2014-2015 eighth-grade state test. The perspective is that if extra attention is dedicated to the task design, then all students, including those who are low performing, can access a new mathematical concept and develop understanding. In other words, a lesson plan is important, but a lesson plan based on a task that does not support a conceptual learning goal limits students' learning opportunities. The authors believe that if teachers spend time collaborating and providing critical feedback on their tasks with a goal of conceptual understanding, then their students have a better chance of developing the mathematical understanding needed to build procedural fluency, increase interest in mathematics, and make greater gains on state tests. (A bibliography is included.)