Communities of practice have taken a firm foothold in the second language teaching profession due to their promise of enabling participants to self determine their professional development needs and, through peer mentoring, achieve their goals. This article provides a rationale as to why the model is particularly well suited to teacher professional development along with guidelines for establishing and sustaining the community. This process is illustrated via several examples: (1) a large-scale, multinational community of practice established in the Lower Mekong region of Southeast Asia and funded by the U.S. Department of State's Office of English Language Programs and (2) two teacher-created local outgrowths of this community established in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.