The author's work as a university faculty member and partner with local school districts remains rooted in the ideals of the Holmes Partnership and its foundational professional development school efforts begun in the 1980s. She is fortunate to have lived several classroom teacher and university professor lives--involved with nascent and established school-university partnerships as a teacher, graduate student, new professor, and, now, veteran university faculty member. While she feels fortunate as a university professor to be able to prioritize these boundary-spanning roles, she is conscious of the tensions that she must navigate. She is more aware than ever of the promises, problematics, and potentials of these partnerships--particularly as they focused on preparing teachers for the challenges of teaching in today's schools. These pledges, challenges, and possibilities relate to (1) the promises of a "real world" orientation and of hybrid roles that formally honor both school- and university-based teacher educators; (2) the difficulty imposed by the increasing gaps between school and university realities; and (3) the potential represented by new organizations and new policy trends.