Anna Ershler Richert is a professor at the School of Education at Mills College in Oakland, California where she is also Director of the Master of Arts in Education with an Emphasis on Teaching (MEET) Program. She is Faculty Director of the Mills Teacher Scholars Program that supports the inquiry practice of more than 100 Bay Area teachers. In her job as a Mills faculty member she has spent over two decades preparing teachers to teach in urban schools, while also learning from them what is entailed in doing this work. She is a member and frequent presenter for the American Education Research Association and a past recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship where she began the project that resulted in this book.