White Kids Need Good Teachers, Too!

 White Kids Need Good Teachers, Too

As a high school teacher for nine years at a predominately Black and Latino student school, quite a few times I heard white teachers exclaim, either in interviews or personal conversations, “I used to work at X school, but they didn’t need me there.” Red flags would always go off in my head whenever I would hear this type of statement.  What I believed these types of teachers were really saying was, “I used to work at a predominately white school with well behaved kids.  Those kids were easy to teach; anybody could do it.  I want to work here with black kids, a much more difficult population to teach.  I know it’s hard to work here and not just anybody can do it, but I can (cape waving in the back).” I know, I’m inferring a lot, but whenever I’d encounter a teacher like this, a few thoughts would go through my head. First, is this teacher trying to be a white savior? Two, how many teacher movies has this person watched? And three, I don’t know any student in America who doesn’t need a good teacher.

One of the popular narratives I’d like to challenge is the one where white liberal teachers leave educational prep programs or easy schools and make a v-line straight to schools that are predominantly minority populated, on a mission to make a difference in those poor kids’ lives.  A similar narrative is romanticized in several Hollywood movies, e.g. Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, The Ron Clark Story, etc.  Don’t get me wrong, this type of teacher has the best intentions, and some of them are phenomenal at their job.  But I’d like to posit that this type of teacher could be a key figure with making systemic changes if he/she chose to teach at predominately white schools. 

I did my student teaching at a “flagship” high school in Chapel Hill, NC.  In at least 4 of my 7 classes, I was the only black person in the room.  On my last day, one of my white female students wrote me a thank you note. Within that note, she talked about how much she loved learning from me and that I was the first black teacher she had ever had.  It was at that moment that I realized, “White kids need good teachers, too!” And by good teachers, I’m specifically talking about socially conscious teachers.  In class we read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and discussed the n-word, the Scottsboro Boys, White Privilege, and Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Backpack”, among other race based topics.  Maybe she had never talked about these topics before, and she enjoyed it.  Maybe thinking about her identity and receiving an education from a black female teacher made her challenge her own understanding of race.  Or maybe she just liked my personality.  Whatever the case, that letter made me think about how predominately white, middle class students need good teachers - ones who challenge students to develop social consciousness.  Her letter almost made me reconsider my decision to leave that school for the minority school where I had already accepted a position; however, I didn’t want to teach in a place where I would be the only black person in the room for multiple periods of the day.  And I didn’t want to be the token, model minority.

Socially conscious white teachers could be really amazing at challenging systemic racism by teaching predominately white students that are stereotypically deemed easy to teach. I think it is important to have someone who looks like them, who has had similar cultural experiences, and who knows how to relate to them in order to challenge their racial identity and privilege.  This is definitely a possible pathway for systemic change.  Now that’s not to say that this (“this” being white teachers challenging white students) doesn’t already happen.  But, the narrative of white teachers leading social movements by turning racism on its head in suburbia is nonexistent.

With this being said, am I suggesting that white teachers shouldn’t teach black and brown kids? Should white teachers leave predominately minority populated schools to teach at predominately white schools?  Absolutely not. I’m not arguing that white, socially conscious, ambitious teachers should not teach at minority-populated high schools.  I’m arguing that the unelaborated discourse is that those types of teachers could have a huge impact on challenging systematic racism through socially conscious pedagogy at predominately white schools.  This is definitely a counter narrative to what society has us as teachers to believe.  We are taught that in order to be a part of change, and in order to help students of color overcome, one should go teach students of color.  But teaching white students may be another viable way to make an impactful, long-lasting difference.