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!) History is a very important subject that all students, regardless of color or culture, should learn. Teachers should not skim through slavery because they want to be sensitive to their black students. We learn history in hopes that we do not repeat the wrong and we can learn from the past. I'm a very young teacher. Many of my students are only a few years younger than me. Many of them look at me like I am an older sister when I first began. Their first impression was that I was not credible. Therefore, I proved myself in my classroom. If I were this white teacher, I would be sensitve to the subject but I do not believe that her credibility is gone based on her race. She must build her credibility to her students and prove to them that she is there to teach them. She should tell her students that regardless of her race and the past, she is their teacher and she has no plans to repeat the oppression that occured.