Abstract
Higher education scholars who participate in grant-funded activities at a junior high school recognize that huge gaps exist between their work world and that of junior high teachers and students--"at risk" and otherwise. One way of overcoming the gap is deeply embedding professional development in schools; such collaboration takes extra time, effort, and patience and demands different rules. This paper interprets focus-group data about the authors' work as college professors meeting once a week with teams of teachers and administrators in a junior high school. In local terminology, the authors are "cluster consultants" working with "clusters." The research is autoethnographic: it analyzes cultural data that the authors themselves have created about their own experiences (Reed-Dahaney 1997) and action research in that their primary goal is to use data to reflect on and improve their work in their own institutions. Toward this end, the paper discusses the authors' changing roles and the effects of their participation, both on Ravine Junior High School (a pseudonym) and on their own pedagogies in the university.