“I was on the spot”: a white student-teacher struggles to find her place in a social studies classroom

Purpose This paper aims to explore the contours of the struggle of a white student-teacher teaching traumatic history and what it can teach us about how white teachers are struggling to find their place in classrooms that are increasingly becoming contested spaces. Design/methodology/approach This was a case study that included observations, interviews and artifact collection over a semester in a secondary social studies classroom. Findings The findings indicate that while more work needs to be done, white student-teachers are struggling with finding their epistemological place in the history as the teacher to these students. Originality/value While there is a lot of work being done with white teachers and with white pre-service teachers, this work is different in that it follows the student-teacher, their teaching and their classroom.