Imagine having the opportunity to work at a new middle school, built around professional learning community principles. From day one, teachers are organized into professional learning teams working to define essential curriculum, develop common assessments, and analyze student data. Similarly, administrators work as a team to support the development of professional learning teams and emphasize a distributed model of leadership. Several years ago, we had the opportunity to work as a teacher and an administrator in this new school in the Wake County (N.C.) Public School System. With little experience to guide us, we learned a number of important lessons. First, professional learning teams represent a powerful mechanism for improvements in teaching and learning. Second, developing successful professional learning teams is difficult, requiring concerted effort