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!) I would most likely feel like Gina in this situation. If a problem arose where students began mentioning the poem and how it affected them and their current situation (with a white as a teacher) then I think it would be important to spend class time examining the poem close up as well as exploring what was the setting of the time/era when this poem was written. Was this written during the civil rights movement? If so, what were people feeling them? How are current events different now than they were then? How have people changed as a result? I think if you address this situation in this manner students will have a better understanding of the feelings behind the poem and how they might be different than what people think/feel today.