In a professional learning community, adults learn through focused conversations on teaching practices and teacher learning to support student learning. Teachers in a professional learning community push each other's thinking and learning about teaching through questioning. While there are multiple opportunities for this critical thinking to occur, it is a process that takes time, commitment, coaching, and facilitation. As external coaches working with professional learning communities, the authors struggled to define their roles and responsibilities. Through these challenges, they learned about their responsibility to share tools, strategies, and protocols for learning community members to focus conversations on teaching practices and student learning. Further, they uncovered the need for all members to develop shared values and vision. As a result, they have a renewed awareness of critical strategies necessary to use in their second year of partnership with the secondary professional learning communities. Given the chance to engage with developing professional learning communities in the rural Southwest through learning opportunities and ongoing dialogue, the authors learned about the immense potential of such communities at individual school sites.