he five-state region served by SEDL is becoming increasingly diverse in population. Within the past decade, the schools in SEDL's region have experienced a 262 percent increase in the number of students who speak Spanish in the home (U.S. Census Bureau, 1990). This demographic shift has immediate implications for the region, particularly the states of Texas and New Mexico because of shared borders with Mexico, which has remained the country of origin for the majority of immigrants to the United States (García, 1994). However, this demographic shift also is changing the student population in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

School districts with high numbers of culturally and linguistically diverse students face many challenges. The performance of these students is typically low. Students spend much of their time in subject area classes with teachers who do not understand their native language and who have had little or no training on how to communicate with them. This failure to understand diverse student cultures often hinders effective teacher-student communication, and these cultural misunderstandings can be a barrier to instruction (Tharp, 1997; Viadero, 1996).

Integrating cultural content into professional development programs is one effective strategy to better prepare educators to address diversity in the classroom. Opportunities to live and teach in another culture can generate multicultural competency, nurture positive cross-cultural attitudes and skills, and produce a deeper understanding of the need for cross-cultural competencies (Chisholm, 1994). The necessity of direct intercultural experience is universally supported (Zeichner, 1993).

In an effort to promote and facilitate intracultural and intercultural experiences for educators, SEDL sponsored two educator exchanges between the U.S. and Mexico in 1996. Information collected from participants in these exchanges was used to help create this resource guide, which was developed for teachers and administrators interested in participating in educator exchanges or for those interested in starting an exchange program. It includes an analysis of an exchange program's critical elements, descriptions of the two SEDL exchanges and participants' outcomes, and information regarding other similar programs. Because we have recorded many of the insights shared by participants in the SEDL exchange, Section III (SEDL's Educator Exchange Program) of this guide may also be of interest to teachers who work with recent immigrant students from Mexico, as it discusses differences between the United States' and Mexico's educational systems.