This article explains how principals and leadership teams have used a pivotal segments approach to overcome problems of time limitations and other barriers and create more meaningful teaching and learning opportunities. To leverage the power of pivotal segments, teams begin by establishing clear goals for student learning and the sequence or progression of elements the lesson will use to achieve those goals. Throughout this process, team members construct a design rationale for the lesson, including a working hypothesis of how the lesson elements will lead students to a deeper understanding and achievement of learning goals (Ermeling & Graff-Ermeling, 2016). Once the storyline and design rationale are in place, teachers identify one or two pivotal lesson segments--key learning opportunities that can make a lightbulb go on for students and help them understand the rest of the lesson. This paper describes how a team of high school English teachers in Las Vegas, Nevada, recently began using pivotal segments to focus their collaborative planning meetings and improve student learning.