Grow Your Own (GYO) educator programs are a potential strategy for districts and universities to employ to help recruit and retain teachers of color. When designed within an asset-based framework, they emphasize equitable approaches and critical perspectives that combine the powerful roles of "homegrown" teachers, culturally-relevant curriculum, and social justice pedagogy in addressing achievement and opportunity gaps, especially for the nation's woefully underserved, largely urban, students of color (e.g., Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Sanders & Rivers, 1996). This special edition on strategies highlights a grow-your-own-educator program involving a community-based partnership with a local school district to carry out the work of a Saturday academy for fourth- and fifth-graders.