Situated in New York City, this qualitative case study investigates nontraditional teachers, particularly immigrant women of color, and their diverse pathways into early childhood classrooms. Against the backdrop of the city’s expansion of public preschool programs and its efforts to ensure high quality through narrowly defined measures of professionalization for the early childhood workforce, I traced the lived experiences of nontraditional immigrant women of color, their becoming teachers of young children, and the ways in which their funds of knowledge shape their teaching practice. (author abstract)