Although the critical role of teachers in curricular reform is well documented, there has been less focus on how the messiness of life in schools affects the daily work of change agents. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected over a 5-year period, we argue that in troubled urban school districts, teacher buy-in to curricular reform is best achieved when change agents adapt their program to the daily needs and problems of classroom teachers. We look in detail at how staff developers help teachers generate strategies for reading and dealing effectively with district demands, so they can simultaneously fulfill official directives and implement progressive classroom practices. Staff developers enable teachers to function as street-level bureaucrats, who then determine how policy will come to life in their classrooms. In turn staff developers learn to read resistance as a form of communicative action to be interpreted rather than a roadblock to be overcome. Finally, we identify three roles—strategist, translator, and advocate—that staff developers play when working with teachers to create the orderly and coherent classrooms children need to learn and thrive.
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