This paper presents a case study as an illustration of the need to probe issues and assumptions that arise when outsider staff developers work with teachers from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. After tracing the historical and sociopolitical context of urban school reform, the paper examines the author/educator's experience of developing relationships and acting as a mentor to African American teachers in early childhood classrooms in an urban school. Using the framework of African American cultural values and communication codes, the author/educator reexamines and reconsiders her own beliefs and behaviors to better understand problematic staff development situations as seen from different perspectives. The case study illustrates challenges that face outsider staff developers in becoming aware of their own biases in forming relationships and communicating with different ethnic groups. The paper reinterprets specific early childhood practices, such as constructivist learning, caring, and choice, through a comparison of European and African American feminist values and assumptions. It presents implications for differentiating staff development practices to fit the individual, cultural, and sociopolitical contexts of schools and teachers. (Contains 38 references.) (Author/BT)