Plunges represent a type of education that is experiential, meaningful, interesting, challenging, confidence-building, growth-inducing and rewarding for most students. They represent a significant means towards students' greater understanding and acceptance of others, as well as of enhancing self-awareness; they thus have great potential as a viable educational approach in a full range of academic, business and government training programs. Given the myriad challenges that confront teacher education in terms of preparing future teachers for the increasingly diverse students they will serve, the cultural plunge provides one means of helping to sensitize student teachers to social and cultural realities, to their own values and biases, and to the students of today's and tomorrow's classrooms. For some years several professors at San Diego State University have been using a cultural immersion activity called a "cultural plunge." They have used this activity in a sociology program, in counselor education, and most recently, as described in this article, in teacher education. The author has been using the cultural plunge in teacher education since 1989, at which time he incorporated it in classes in that department, and several other teacher education faculty now use it as well. While faculty who utilize the cultural plunge tend to do so in a similar manner, there are some differences among the approaches. This article describes the way in which the author approaches this activity. (Contains 1 table.)