Purpose The purpose of this paper is to deflate some of the pressure-orienting teachers toward following a curricular script. Design/methodology/approach The authors connect effective classroom teaching and learning practices to a dialogic instructional stance that values local resources and student perspectives and contributions. The authors argue that effective teachers have agency to make decisions about content and pacing adjustments (they call this agentive flow) and that they practice response-able talk. Response-able talk practices are responsive to what is happening in the classroom, responsibly nurture joint purposes and multiple perspectives, and cultivate longer exchanges of student exploratory talk. These talk practices are not easily scripted. Findings The authors show what these effective, local and dialogic instructional practices look like in a second-grade urban classroom. Practical implications The authors call upon every teacher to robustly find their local ways of working. Originality/value In this paper, the authors argue that harnessing the local is an essential aspect of dialogic instruction and a critical component of a dialogic instructional stance.