This paper describes several innovations to an early field experience emerging from a community, school, and university partnership focused on a middle school serving diverse students from low-income neighborhoods. With the primary goal of utilizing teaching candidates to provide direct academic, social, and instructional support to the middle school students, university faculty and middle school educators worked in collaboration to simultaneously provide rich professional learning experiences for the preservice teachers. Preliminary assessment of the model suggests promising practices of clustering, hybrid roles of university and school-based educators, and expanding contexts for field experiences beyond the traditional classroom.