Elementary teachers frequently face the challenge of teaching about their state with limited time and resources. Teaching state or regional history is a longstanding tradition in fourth grade and has been part of the social studies curriculum since the beginning of the 20th century. In addition, national and state standards include attention to state history or region. Despite this tradition and expectation that elementary teachers will teach about their state, they often struggle to prepare and teach state studies while also teaching a multitude of other subjects, meeting their diverse students' needs, and fulfilling the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. In this article, the author describes how during the 2002-2003 school year, she observed and interviewed four elementary teachers in Wisconsin who were identified as exemplary in teaching Wisconsin studies. At the time of the study, the four teachers had extensive teaching experience, however they had less experience teaching Wisconsin studies. All four teachers taught in schools that gave top priority to improving students' literacy. The teachers focused on both literacy and state studies by reading trade books (fiction and nonfiction) and other nonfiction sources such as newspaper articles related to the state, teaching reading strategies to help students understand challenging texts, and incorporating writing activities to allow students to summarize their learning about the state. The student populations of the four schools in this study were also varied in culture and social class. All four teachers faced classes with diverse learning needs, language skills, and reading levels. All students were encouraged to participate in a variety of activities in order to meet their learning needs. All four teachers utilized the expertise of historians, historical societies, local resource people, and educators at their own school to enrich their teaching of state studies. All four teachers also had extensive content knowledge of the history, geography, economics, government, and cultures of the state, one of the characteristics of expert teachers. The author concludes that these are challenging times for elementary social studies teachers with the current emphasis on high stakes tests. Elementary teachers who teach state studies face additional challenges of finding good teaching resources while still meeting a variety of students' needs. However, by learning from experienced teachers, such as the four described in this article, elementary teachers can provide meaningful experiences for students to learn about their state. (Contains 19 notes.)