A major strand in the current national push to improve secondary education is the movement to scale down schools into smaller, more personalized units, especially for students facing the greatest obstacles to success. Hundreds of small schools and learning communities have cropped up in recent years, famously helped along by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $1.5 billion campaign to raise the numbers of students who graduate from high schools ready for college and work. Whatever promise the small-schools approach holds, though, there widespread agreement it will not be realized without a sufficient supply of teachers who are up to a triple threat of challenges: urban teaching in the context of a start-up operation, often with a heavy dose of surrogate parenting thrown in. This article describes the commitment given by teachers in the small public high schools cropping up in many U.S. cities. Ironically, it is the human dimension of small schools--precisely the attribute that experts see as their greatest strength--that can be the most draining and rewarding.