This paper brings a teacher's perspective to bear on recent policy initiatives requiring all high schoolgraduates to complete an Algebra One course. The teacher in this paper is caught between a desire to provide students in a lower track class with access to mathematics, which plays an important role in providing opportunities for a college education, and students' questions about why study algebra. This predicament leads the teacher to rethink his own understand of algebra and his approach to teaching the subject.When teaching algebra differently, he is convinced of students' sense making abilities in mathematics, but is dismayed by the complexity of the task of working with the class as a social unit. This complexity is illustrated with a controversy about defining mathematical terminology and the insights to which this controversy leads.