Some crystallized conceptions may guide the work of teachers, which may explain the differences between their discourse and their practice. Resignifying "teacher wisdom", i.e. reinterpreting it, seems a previous step to both teachers' development and school change. Based on a collaborative case study developed with 20 middle-school teachers working on a Brazilian public school, this paper aims to analyze an example of this process focusing on one of their hardest professional dilemmas: teaching the fifth grade students. It includes investigation with the teachers: (i) their middle-school auto-biographical reports; (ii) their students' experiences; (iii) the opinion of their elementary school colleagues; (iv) ethnographical approach research based on fifth grade classes in Brazilian public school. After criticizing their dilemmas with fifth grade classes, teachers reinterpreted their conception of student and teacher work, which led them to try different attitudes and procedures