This article investigates one small aspect of the work of secondary social studies teacher preparation at Michigan State University (and, of course, the surrounding public schools where so much of this preparation actually takes place). The authors have come to see that there cannot be a successful program without having close, warm, collegial relationships between mentor teachers and university course and field instructors. The teachers that society wishes to have cannot be prepared absent a shared identity--one rooted in both teacher education and the education of public school children. Or, as Bullough (2005) has written, as long as mentor teachers' main identification is with "teachers and school children, not university-based teacher educators and beginning teachers, it is highly likely that teacher education will remain little more than a weak exercise in vocational socialisation" (p. 144). In this article, the authors first lay out the framework for making sense of this shared identity--a framework borrowed from scholarship in social studies education. After briefly talking about the sources and nature of the data, they present examples of the way in which the framework for shared identity allows the authors to make sense of the lived experiences of both mentor teachers and field instructors in the program. The article concludes by turning to the voice of Ben--who as both a committed middle school teacher and teacher educator offers both a warning and a sense of hope for the work of mutually-shared teacher preparation. (Contains 3 notes.)