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 believe that Gina should not let the poem and the reaction effect how she views her own legitimacy in the same way that African Americans may have had a temptation to question their own legitimacy at many times and places throughout our US history where civil rights have been a major issue. I do believe that it will be difficult for Gina in this school situation and that students may look to her to see how she may react given that she will be in the minority as a White Teacher among the students and most likely the staff as well. Gina will need to process how she feels about the poem. Gina could perhaps find a way to show her students that the poem did have its intended effect and that if the African American students had the courage to share this poem in other places where they were not in the majority - it would probably have a positive emotional effect on other White Americans. This could help to empower her students and she could find a way to improve communication and help find common ground with her students by letting them know what specifically charged her emotions and what may have been better to leave out from her perspective as a white American of European descent.