The evidence from their project has persuaded Ms. Ladson-Billings and Ms. Gomez that improving teachers' knowledge and supporting changes in pedagogical practice will be a slow and painstaking process that must be grounded in a specific school/community context. COMEDIAN AND filmmaker Woody Allen attributed a large percentage of his success to just showing up. His comment reminds us that some of life's challenges are not about complex or complicated solutions and processes. Similarly, in dealing with some of the more intractable issues of urban schooling, we may need to do a better job of showing up for our students. In this article, we detail a collaboration between ourselves - two university researchers - and a group of primary-level teachers who are attempting to improve the early literacy abilities of children at risk of school failure. We work in a community where public schools are well regarded. Among its four comprehensive high schools, there are approximately 50 National Merit finalists each year. Realtors brag to prospective home buyers about the quality of the public schools and point out how well the students perform on standard measures when compared with students both in other parts of the state and nationwide. At the elementary level, the student/teacher ratio is about 22 to 1, and the elementary schools continue to have specialist teachers in art, music, and physical education. Each elementary school is equipped with a library that is staffed by a certified librarian. However, in the midst of all these resources and support, there are pockets of failure. Some schools in the district serve children and families who are living in poverty. Many of these children are students of color or students whose primary language is not English. The failure of these students to succeed in the local public schools has been a particular challenge to the school district, to the specific schools, and to the individual classroom teachers. Similar concerns about the academic performance of children of color and children living in poverty have been expressed by school districts with similar achievement and demographic profiles.1 How can it be that, even in some of the nation's best public schools, some students regularly and predictably fail to benefit from schooling? The school community we began working with is the Bret Harte School.2 It is a large elementary school serving about 700 students, located on the side of the city that is home to a substantial number of working- class families. The homes in the community are older and more modest than the homes in other sections of the city, and the school also serves a number of apartment buildings. Many of the children at Bret Harte who have experienced school failure come from a low-income apartment community. Two years ago, we began a discussion with the district superintendent about how we might collaborate with teachers to help support the literacy abilities of early learners (K-2). Students throughout Wisconsin are required to take the Third-Grade Reading Test, a criterion-referenced test developed by teachers in the state. Although controversy exists over the validity of the Third-Grade Reading Test, its designations of below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced have serious consequences for how students are taught. Students who fail to achieve at the basic level or above are more likely to be placed in pull-out programs, such as Title I or Reading Recovery. Indeed, failing the Third-Grade Reading Test seems to have consequences that extend throughout students' academic lives in the district. Our concern, however, was not whether or not some students were in need of special services, but rather why students of color and students living in poverty were overrepresented among this group. We made clear to the superintendent that we would not be students or teaching teachers. Instead, our work was based on a theoretical notion that teachers' ability to create a professional community is integral to improving and student learning. …