The authors, Angiline and Al, are university teacher educators who share similar experiences building community in middle grades mathematics classroom. As eighth grade mathematics teachers, they began the year building relationships with their students and encouraging communication to establish a caring ethic. In their mathematics classes, a…

This is a personal account of the author's naivete, growth, and hope as a literacy educator after she left her position as a university professor to teach reading to young adolescents. She describes how her experience and academic expertise did not fully prepare her for the realities of working in a middle school and how she became more aware of…