A White Teacher Talks about Race

by Julie Landsman

Overview

Veteran teacher Julie Landsman leads the reader through a day of teaching and reflection about her work with high school students who are from a variety of cultures. She speaks honestly about issues of race, poverty, institutional responsibility, and white privilege by engaging the reader in the experiences of a day in the classroom with some of her remarkable students. Throughout the day, we meet bigotry head-on, struggle with questions of racial identity, and find cultural conflict in the corridors of the school building. Along the way, we come face to face with Tyrone, a young African-American student grappling with the realities of discrimination in suburbia. We encounter Sheila, a teenage mother struggling to raise her baby in poverty, and we get to know Sarah, a white girl living on the streets of Minneapolis. Through the author's eyes, we begin to understand the complexities of teaching in today's society and we learn within the pages of this book, if only just for a moment, what it feels like to be the other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607090656
Publisher:	R&L Education
Publication date:	03/16/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	265 KB

About the Author

Julie Landsman is Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Until her recent retirement, she had spent many years working with both troubled and gifted students in middle and high schools in the Minneapolis Public School System. She continues to teach in Minneapolis as a Writer in the Schools. Ms. Landsman presently has a monthly column in the Skyway News.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Our Changing World: A Cause for Celebration
Chapter 2 Before School: What I Bring
Chapter 3 Waiting for First Hour
Chapter 4 First Hour: Recognizing Oneself
Chapter 5 Second Hour: History and Literature
Chapter 6 Third Hour: Student Voices as the Center of the Class
Chapter 7 Lunch Hour: Students' Lives
Chapter 8 Fourth Hour: Connections
Chapter 9 Interlude: Twenty-Four Seven
Chapter 10 Fifth Hour: Representing
Chapter 11 My White Power World
Chapter 12 Sixth Hour: Expectations
Chapter 13 After School: Training Teachers
Chapter 14 At Night: Community
Chapter 15 Living in Different Worlds
Chapter 16 Celebrations at Home
Chapter 17 Resistance: The Power of White Activism
Chapter 18 Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

Informed by a compassionate intelligence and thousands of hours of urban teaching experience, this very personal book addresses issues so important that we often don't know how to speak about them. Instead of theorizing, Minneapolis-based Julie Landsman recounts stories from her 25 years at the head of the class. Whether you are white, black, Asian American, Latino American, or Native American, A White Teacher Talks About Race can teach you something. Unpat and unpatronizing.

In this account of her years teaching in a multi-ethnic Midwestern high school, Landsman (Basic Needs) discusses the life lessons she learned from her street-smart, determined students: people of color often have to struggle with being the only representative of their race at a social gathering or in class; white people can never understand how it feels to be shadowed by suspicious store managers or prejudiced cops; simply showing up to class can be a monumental task when one is struggling to feed the baby or find a place to sleep at night. Given her self-confessed privileged background, Landsman's intellectual and personal rapport with her students is impressive; they seem wonderfully comfortable telling her about their relationships, aspirations, fears and failings. The reader craves more nuanced revelations from Landsman herself, however. While she gamely tells us that white teachers "cannot reach certain students the way someone of their own skin color or culture can reach them," readers may want to know if she ever catches herself feeling ambivalent about her students, doubting their abilities for a moment or questioning her own capacity for unbiased teaching. Readers drawn to this title may be disappointed that Landsman's observations about racism in education generally reiterate arguments already established by other writers, such as Beverly Tatum in Why Do All the Black Kids Sit Together in the Cafeteria? Still, this balanced, quietly impassioned account affords insight into race relations in the classroom and will appeal to parents and educators who are struggling with these issues. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Experienced teacher and Minneapolis writer Landsman (Basic Needs: A Year with Street Kids in a City School) here describes a typical day in an inner-city, alternative high school program. She discusses the daily trials and triumphs of her students, 75 percent or more of whom are not of European descent and many with family difficulties, children of their own to support, and daily confrontations with violence and racism. Through her experiences, Landsman portrays some of the practices that work with "nontraditional" students, such as having them write from different perspectives and offering more inclusive lessons about history, and she points out the flaws of current "one size fits all" approaches to education. This readable book conveys its message simply and powerfully. A superb addition to public and academic libraries. Mark Bay, Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ. Lib., Indianapolis Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This book consists of a series of reflections by the author, who takes the reader through a full day of teaching and engaging with students. The vignettes discuss race, poverty, institutional responsibility, and white privilege. Landsman has taught in the Minneapolis Public Schools for 25 years and currently teaches at Hamline University in the teacher training programs. The lack of index may not be a real problem due to the anecdotal nature of the book. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Julie Landsman breaks the silence, taking us into the lives of her propulsive students, grounding her reflections on race in these energetic and engaging young people as they negotiate the tricky terrain of identity within an American multiplicity.

William Ayers

Julie Landsman has said everything I, as a black woman, always wanted to say to white people...Landsman has assembled a moving series of stories and reflections which throw a shaft of light on every day but often ignored racial/cultural collisions...This book gives me tremendous hope because it demonstrates how one can understand back and forth across the lines of race and culture without giving up anything dear to our identity. I want everyone I know to read it.

Mary Moore Easter

...Landsman pushes for an ideal educational diversity while never departing from the concreteness of her own classroom, her students, and their shared daily challenges.

Doubletake

Unique, vital kids and a great teacher, yet it is also larger than that...Inspiring, gorgeous, heart-breaking prose...A must-read for anyone who claims to be alive, awake, alert—or who wants to get there. This is an important book!

Natalie Goldberg

Julie Landsman is courageous. In a time when racial rhetoric has gone stale, and when too many have thrown up their hands in despair, Ms. Landsman's clear-eyed observations are a tonic. This painfully honest and sometimes troubling book challenges readers to think critically about what is going on in our classrooms and in our society. A White Teacher Talks About Race is required reading for anyone interested in the future of American schools.

David Haynes

If you are one of the teachers exhausted by the ways that systemic race and class dynamics play out in school, Landsman's stories may give you courage....This is a teacher I would cherish for my children: wise about power dynamics, committed to justice, engaged with students, and never self-righteous.

Peggy McIntosh

...Landsman brings keen observation and empathy to her recollections of working as a writer and teacher with racially diverse students at a public high school in Minneapolis....She lifts some of those blinders in this insightful presentation on the intersection of race, poverty, and culture in an increasingly diverse nation.

Booklist

Touching, graceful, and painfully honest...there's a humanity and frankness to Landsman's words.

Chicago Tribune - Mark Luce

...Landsman draws readers in...[she] writes frankly about the intersections of race, culture, class, gender, education, and white privilege...Landsman's reflections have import for all who teach and work with teens.

VOYA

Landsman brings keen observation and empathy to her recollections of working as a writer and teacher with racially diverse students at a public high school in Minneapolis....She lifts some of those blinders in this insightful presentation on the intersection of race, poverty, and culture in an increasingly divers nation.

Booklist