This study presents the case of a preservice science student teacher with a desire to make science education more accessible to all students. The paper highlights her cross-cultural student teaching experience in an urban middle school with a predominantly Hispanic-American population. Data were gathered from interviews conducted throughout her student teaching experience, a journal in which she recorded her daily experiences and reflections, and classroom observations. Results found that she encountered three cultural borders during her student teaching experience: the culture of the students, the culture of instruction, and the culture of the school. As a science student teacher, she clarified her own beliefs about relevant, meaningful, and student-centered science instruction within her own interpretation of the cultural border. In order to cross the student culture border, she spent time learning about her students and their lives. She learned to understand their culture through the stories in their journals and their personal tales. Her instructional philosophy was often different from that of other teachers at the school. She tried to assimilate her culture of instruction into the predominant one, but by the end of the student teaching experience, she had returned to her own beliefs. She did not move comfortably into the culture of the school. However, encountering borders was beneficial because she knowingly learned more about working within a diverse environment and unknowingly clarified hew own beliefs. (Contains 16 references.) (Author/SM)