Students enter Emily Daniels' and Maureen Squires' combined Bachelor of Arts/Master's in the Science of Teaching Program as undergraduates or move into their MST Program as Master's candidates matriculating after they have earned Bachelor's degree elsewhere. Both groups of students take the research class during their first semester of graduate work. The students are seeking certification in childhood or adolescent education in the content areas including math, science (e.g., biology, geology, chemistry, physics), English, social studies, and foreign languages (e.g., Spanish, French). The yearlong research course opens with a focus on general information and the exploration of educational research, which leads to the development of a collaborative research proposal during their first semester. Their second semester is dedicated to implementing the research project through the collection and analysis of data, the writing-up of their project and a poster session presentation. Beginning the process of research as first-year faculty members, Daniels and Squires confronted multiple levels of complexity. They worked to balance various nuances of learning systems, instructional skills and practices, and the organization of instructional environments while addressing students' needs, alongside their academic and campus-wide responsibilities. The juggling of these responsibilities and identities contributed to their desire to understand how their development as scholars was parallel to the development of their students. Daniels and Squires began to consider research to be a topic, an experience, and an identity. Across these many levels, they found themselves struggling to portray the topic of research to their pre-service teachers as something intriguing, informative, necessary and perhaps potentially empowering. Herein, they provide a discussion based on these questions: What does it mean to be a teacher as well as a researcher? How do we combine these identities and practices?