White was best known at the School for his weekly commentaries on students' work, described as "sympathetic yet searching criticisms that faithfully showed them how weak they were yet always somehow made them courageous and strong." His student Marie Riggin Higbee Avery summarized what happened there by saying "The rigor of our training, together with the indominable spirit fostered in each of us, a result of Clarence White's teaching, was to carry a few of the least promising of the group to places of high honor in the photograph world."