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!) The poem does have educational effects. Students need to understand that this country has seen days of oppression of one race at the hands of another. It is not an opinion or thought; it is a fact. I do not believe however, that the poem would affect her legitimacy as a White teacher in a Black school. Like any of the teachers at the school, if she is there for the students, everything will typically be okay. Though the history might look gloomy when it is brought up, she cannot let that stop her from her purpose. She should let her students know (subtly) that she cares for the success of all of her students no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they look like. If she would like to discuss or use the poem in her classroom, she could probably look at different races or minority from around the world that have (or is) been oppressed. She could have her students to look at the root of the oppression, the struggle of the oppressed, and the successes of those oppressed after they were able to be freed of that oppression. Looking at the full spectrum of a race or minorities progression would allow the students to see that this teacher is much more about the future and its possibilities rather than the ugliness of the past. I believe that linking those stories to that of the poem would allow the teacher and her students to have wonderful conversation and openness about the issue.