Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         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!) My first response would have been to talk to her mentor teacher and discuss the implications of the poem with them. Since they know the students in that school better, they will probably have a better insight to the poem. I would also have talked to my college professor to see how they would handle the situation. I think it is important to hear multiple points of view so you are able to have multiple insights to the situation. I would also address the poem in a polite and educational way. I would not be defensive towards the poem. I would express the poem as a piece of literature and talk with the students about the poem just as I would any other poem. I don't think it is necessary to be defensive towards the poem or the student who wrote the poem because that would create problems in the classroom. I think the best way to address this poem and presentation is to teach it as any piece of literature that they would study in class.