‘Louisiana, Louisiana, they're tryin' to wash us away, they're tryin' to wash us away," sings Randy Newman in his song "Louisiana, 1927," which chronicles the rising of the flood waters in Louisiana and the government's racist and limited response.

"Washing away" seems an apt metaphor to describe what's happened to the poor and black of the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Yet, as we come to grips with the bleak reality of America today, how do we approach this in the classroom? As a public high school teacher in Tacoma, Wash., thousands of miles away from Louisiana, I asked myself, "What does Katrina teach us about poverty and race in America?" This is the question I wanted my students to wrestle with.

Conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly made it clear who he thought bore the brunt of the responsibility in New Orleans:

If you're poor, you're powerless. Not only in America, but everywhere on earth. If you don't have enough money to protect yourself from danger, danger's gonna find you. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should be taught in every American school: If you don't get educated, if you don't develop a skill and force yourself to work hard, you'll most likely be poor. And sooner or later you'll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help. Chances are, that help will not be quick in coming.

It was in this context that I decided to write a role play on Katrina, to dig deeper than what my students were seeing on the nightly news, to ask serious questions about what this catastrophe represents.