Teachers Must Be Ready to Engage
Sydney Chaffee, NBCTApril 19, 2017
It was late winter in my ninth grade Humanities class. We were learning about the history of South Africa—how the white-ruled government oppressed people of color and called it “apartheid,” and how those oppressed people resisted. My student Mark was having a hard day. He had repeatedly disrupted class with disrespectful comments towards his peers. I wrote him a pass to see the dean, and he was angry. On his way out the door, he looked back at me and yelled, “How can they have a white person teach us about apartheid? That’s so racist.” Being a white teacher in…