The teachers' narratives and the author's interpretation presented in this paper are a part of a three year ethnographic research on the schooling and educational experience of circus and fairground children in an area of the Veneto region between Padua and Venice. As an anthropological perspective and ethnographic intent (Wolcott 1987) require, the fieldwork conversations on such topics were situated within the context of the group's everyday life and work culture as well as of the group's relation to the larger society and its values and institutions. This multi-level ethnographic approach (Ogbu 1981) provided a more comprehensive and finer understanding of the ways and strategies the group's members enact daily to succeed in the struggle to secure economic well being for their families and to gain (and hopefully to maintain) a positive group identity. If fairground and circus families and children perceive schooling as an asset, how do teachers look at those children as pupils? And in what way are the teachers' perspectives and experience influenced by society's and school's culture and expectations? The paper will present the teachers' own emic theories about this occupational group's children and their educational needs. The author will also point out how raising the issue of these children's right to education in a systematic way (if not for the first time in Italy) had the unforeseen effect that families, associations' leaders and a number of teachers became aware of the "problem" and wanted to know what could be done.