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 fact that Gina was moved emotionally by the poem is a wonderfully "human" reaction to an emotional historical time period. Because she is completing her student teaching, I would encourage her to speak to her teacher that she is working with, just to clarify what activities might be helpful, but she needs to have the understanding that the poetry reading does not effect her value as a teacher. She needs to see each student as one human that she may be able to teach and love and then enable to go out into the world and make it better. Encourage her to see herself as valuable.