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  Case: White Intern in a Black inner-city school
My sister, Gina, who is a young White girl, started her student teaching in a predominantly Black school in inner-city America. She initially approached her job with optimism and purpose. However, she began to experience her first doubts with the presentation of an emotionally charged poetry reading at an all-school assembly. The poem painted a picture of the oppression of the African Americans by the European American majority. My sister was moved by the poem and accepted the historical truth of its message. At the same, she said she wondered what educational effects of the poem were and whether it would affect her legitimacy as a White teacher in a Black school. She talked to me about her experience. I am an experienced teacher, but I could not answer whether poems like that have any educational value, and whether or not my sister should worry about her legitimacy as a White teacher. I don't what she should do in this specific situation.
Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!)
I had much the same experience during my second student teaching placement. Being from a predominately white, rural area, student teaching in a 98% black, inner-city middle school was an intense shock to me at first. I think that, as white Americans, especially in the South, we grow up believing that "we" are still to blame for some of the mistakes of the past (read: slavery). I grew up in rural Georgia but moved to Memphis, TN when I was 20 (that's where I did my student teaching). If you think that slavery is forgotten, you are incredibly and sadly mistaken. Memphis is the cesspool of racism and hatred in America. While at my student teaching placement, I pretty much did what I had to do and kept to myself. I did not, however, find that the students themselves respected me any less because of my race. I think that, if anything, they respected me less because I look younger than I am (even my university supervisor told me I needed to dress "older"...even though I was wearing dress slacks and a turtleneck sweater that day).

Since I have become a teacher, however, I have learned to be more open with my students about race and oppression. This semester, my language arts resource class is doing a unit on Civil Rights. We have been reading "While the World Watched," which is about the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. I have a unique background for this because my entire family lived in Memphis, TN during the Civil Rights movement (including the assassination of Dr. King) so I have some stories that my parents have told me about that time that I am able to pass on to my students. Because we live in rural Georgia and my students have not experienced much (if any at all) racism, they do not understand the degree to which blacks were discriminated against.

If I were to give any advice to your sister, I would say to open up the discussion with her students. It makes me wonder if the students feel like they are being oppressed or are simply celebrating their heritage.