Examines the pedagogical and political supports necessary to provide a high-quality education to language minority students in mainstream classrooms in the United States. Chapters address (1) standards-based education reform and minority student performance, highlighted by the experience of Texas public schools; (2) the challenge of building a qualified teacher corps to meet the needs of English learners; (3) teaching strategies to promote second language literacy, illustrated by a program for Cambodian students in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; (4) special considerations for teaching bilingual students in mainstream classrooms; (5) cross-cultural teaching that employs the arts and oral narrative and connects students to the community at large; (6) the multiple roles of teachers as advocates, border crossers, and cultural brokers; (7) teachers’ perspectives on effective teacher preparation; and (8) the Bilingual/ESL/Multicultural (BEM) Practitioner Program in the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’sSchool of Education, which prepares professionals to teach students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and incorporates the principles of equity and social justice into its curriculum. Educational policies, public schools, and teacher preparation programs need to be remodeled to respond to the needs of language minority students and to provide teachers with the professional supports they need to help these students succeed.
