Teacher education programs must begin to foster in beginning teachers of all disciplines new images of collaboration, involvement, and inquiry-images of classroom environments where students of all cultures engage in interdisciplinary activities and construct knowledge rooted in their own personal experiences. The high number of language minority students who score below the national norm in mathematics and science and avoid careers in these areas underscores the fact that uncoordinated instruction has had negative ramifications on the academic success of these students. Collaboration between ESOL teachers and teachers of other subject areas is imperative. Teacher education programs must reevaluate current pedagogical orientations and reorganize to prepare teacher candidates of all disciplines for coordinated interdisciplinary education for all students. This article describes the evolution of a collaborative initiative involving undergraduate and graduate students in two teacher education programs at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. This collaboration, motivated by constructivist approaches, integrates language pedagogy and science instruction. It is based on the premise that if teachers are to collaborate in schools and create enhanced interdisciplinary classroom environments that better foster students' linguistic and academic growth, they must experience such pedagogy in teacher education programs at the university.

N HIS speech accepting the Republican nomination in 2000, George W. Bush spoke of the "soft bigotry of low expectations." 1 His No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative has since become a far-reaching piece of national legislation intended to raise those low expectations and give equal learning opportunities to all children. What we now know from research conducted in various states is that the curriculum emerging in response to NCLB's testing mandates lowers, rather than raises, expectations. 2 Teachers have become deliverers of a standard curriculum, geared toward the tests, with a pacing schedule designed to finish the material in time for the tests. However, to offer real educational equity, teachers need to employ differentiated instructional practices that can help children develop the cognitive processes, the skill sets, and the social capital that give rise to successful engagement in our society. Research on learning tells us that students reach a deep understanding of fundamental concepts incrementally as teachers assess and respond to their perceptions in real time, which is why curriculum needs to be contextualized and not standardized. Sadly, today's educational mandates are not based on today's understanding of how people learn. Spaces of Liberty: Battling the New Soft Bigotry of NCLB Despite the strictures of NCLB, teachers need spaces in which they can negotiate the curriculum in response to students' individual progress. Similarly, students need spaces in which they can pursue their own ideas and thus help their teachers shape the curriculum. But such conditions cannot exist without the policies and funding to support them.

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Constructivism is a learning theory based on the notion that learners generate meaning through iterative mental formulation and reformulation of theories that satisfy the search for understanding.