This study offered insight on the intermingling of discourse communities in the learning environment by examining experiences of composition instructors from a regional Southern university and their reflections of teaching students who struggled to navigate from home discourse to academic discourse. Merriam's basic qualitative research design served as the methodological design. Although interview was the primary method of collecting data on instructors' experiences, three types of data were collected to form a holistic view of the phenomenon: semi-structured in-depth interviews, researcher's field notes, and member checks of the transcriptions. The population consisted of ten, full-time faculty members who have taught composition courses each semester for the past five years. The sample population was employed at a regional Southern university. The data analysis consisted of coding for patterns and themes. The analysis offered findings that demonstrated various discourse communities existed in the learning environment. Underrepresented student populations were present in the classroom with nontraditional students as the most mentioned. Essay errors were corrected by instructor feedback with grammatical with mechanical errors were reported to be the most common error on composition essays. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]