"I Was on the Spot": A White Student-Teacher Struggles to Find Her Place

• In Event: White Supremacist Ideologies and Culture in Teacher Education

Abstract

Ms. Williams was a student-teacher as I visited her classroom and worked with her. I was intellectually excited for her about this lesson that she was going to teach. She was stretching herself in ways that she felt was necessary by taking on a lesson about civil rights and violence that our nation was experiencing in the spring of 2018. Her lesson tied together the murders of Emmett Till and Stephon Clark, who had been murder a week prior. The class was filled with energy and passion as students discussed the idea. In the moment and our reflection, Ms. Williams struggled to know her place as a white teacher in her classroom and after.

Author

• Jesus Tirado, Auburn University