In the president's column for this issue, Eileen Glisan reminds us of how summer has traditionally been viewed as a time to refresh skills, explore new environments, and refocus energies. Her message resonates with those of us involved with foreign language teacher education because it is frequently in the summer that we interact with inservice teachers as they seek out coursework to help develop a greater capacity to teach their target language. Further, as language education professionals we have been provoked by policy makers to redefine what is teacher capacity and clearly identify what constitutes best practice (Duncan, 2009). The focus of Secretary of Education Duncan's critique of teacher education programs centered on who prepares teachers, in what manner, and how well (Duncan, 2009, pp. 1-3). Little discussion, however, has been elicited on providing or defining meaningful inservice teacher development. Yet it is just this group that requires attention. The novice to midcareer inservice teachers are the ones who have the greatest effect on language learning in the schools, and it is they that provide the inspiration for future language teachers. In a graduate program that I direct, an aspect of the master's degree has as its focus the development of best practices by infusing the inservice teacher with a good grounding in theory and research. My colleagues and I have discovered that the inservice teachers we have admitted into graduate study have as their agenda a demand that the coursework provide them with a practical framework for teaching languages in the schools and nothing more. Their interest in studying theory and research is often conditional. They expect and sometimes vociferously demand that their coursework provide them only with enhanced instructional techniques, and they are dismissive of theory. We find ourselves at cross purposes programmatically, professionally, and personally when our students view the purpose of inservice teacher development so narrowly and the professoriate wish them to develop a broader perspective. However, when I maintain that improved practice is and must be grounded in research and theory, my graduate students sometimes think I'm veering into the esoteric. I find them scanning my vita to see if, when, and how long ago I taught K-12 students, not just graduate students. They examine the syllabi to see if we have designed theory heavy courses or ones that appear to connect research findings to improved and enhanced practice. They critique the theoretical frameworks offered to see if they pass the real-world sniff test. Following good program evaluation practices, as a faculty we review our course evaluations and discussions with our inservice teacher graduate students. Many of the students confess that they enter the master's program to move up on the salary scale, but they also have a true desire to learn how to enhance their teaching. They also admit that they have begun to question the effectiveness of instructional techniques learned as undergraduates, and they are dissatisfied with the minimal successes of their teaching practice. Further, the graduate students acknowledge that they are frustrated with their untutored, random searches for new ideas about how to teach their language better. Most certainly they lead the harried lives of classroom teachers. They teach too many classes, too many students, and often compromise their best instincts. Consequently, they don't have much time left over for unguided and potentially unproductive searches for what works. …