In my talk, I foreground what I and my colleagues have learned about discourse in the numerous classrooms we observed in a four-year research study at an urban high school. While Jefferson High had a student body that was linguistically and culturally diverse, it was homogeneous socioeconomically, being labeled "low income". Some of the research I address reveals how the classroom discourse both co-constructed and was influenced by these phenomena. Additionally, my survey of the research reveals that theoretical frameworks shape the research process and, ultimately, what we learn about classroom discourse.