Are instructional aides colleagues of teachers, bridges to the school community, both, or neither? This study addresses this question by asking instructional aides about their relationships with teachers and parents and about their status in schools, and suggestions are made to create stronger bonds among these partners in education. This paper relies on the concept of "teachers' knowledge" (Carter, 1993; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Doyle, 1990; Shulman, 1987) as a way to study instructional aides' knowledge about their work. Specifically, this research uses Connelly and Clandinin's epistemology of "teacher as knower" as a way to frame the voices of the instructional aides. The practical knowledge and personal experience of the instructional aides about their relationships with teachers and parents reinforce the need for much better and targeted training of teachers and aides for the work they do together and with the parents and families of students. (Contains 4 endnotes.)