Classroom teachers in high school and college need communication skills beyond precise and dramatic lecturing. They must be willing to plan and ask searching questions meant to transform classrooms into dialogic and interpersonal places. Educators must halt the curricular production of passive stenographers and begin the work of assisting students with critical thinking and confident speaking. Various tactics for initiating instructional dialogue are reviewed, but the point that tactics alone are not sufficient is expressed. Projects that engage students over time will stimulate more animated and advanced content conversations than any batch of teacher controlled vocal tactics. Project models are described, along with a recent dialogue experiment conducted during a course. The paper concludes by suggesting that excuses for avoiding dialogic energies may come too easily for teachers. Such excuses include: content is too new, or too advanced, or students aren't ready, or there's not enough time, or you can't grade discourse. It is suggested that failure to advance classroom content dialogue is a failure of teacher vision. (Author/IAH)