This article describes an alternative venue clinical experience that provides advanced literacy specialist candidates and preservice teacher candidates at a small liberal arts university context for advancing their roles and understanding of effective teaching. The article situates our conceptual and pedagogical understandings of teaching and learning in a body of theoretical work, upon which we have relied to craft the clinical experience. This article also describes the multi-layered field experience, and shares lessons learned from the course instructors, literacy coaches, and preservice candidates. Finally, we discuss next steps in our quest to improve clinically rich practice.