South Carolina
Related: About this forumHer students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?
Mary Woods school reprimanded her for teaching a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now she hopes her bond with students can survive South Carolinas politics.
By Hannah Natanson
September 18, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Mary Wood, whose own students reported her for a lesson on racism, stands outside the school she attended and where she now teaches. (Will Crooks)
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CHAPIN, S.C. As gold sunlight filtered into her kitchen, English teacher Mary Wood shouldered a worn leather bag packed with first-day-of-school items: Three lesson-planning notebooks. Two peanut butter granola bars. An extra pair of socks, just in case. ... Everything was ready, but Wood didnt leave. For the first time since she started teaching 14 years ago, she was scared to go back to school.
Six months earlier, two of Woods Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coatess Between the World and Me, a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.
The students wrote in emails that the book and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of their race. ... Reading Coatess book felt like reading hate propaganda towards white people, one student wrote. ... At least two parents complained, too. Within days, school administrators ordered Wood to stop teaching the lesson. They placed a formal letter of reprimand in her file. It instructed her to keep teaching without discussing this issue with your students.
Wood finished out the spring semester feeling defeated and betrayed not only by her students, but by the school system that raised her. The high school Wood teaches at is the same one she attended. ... It had been a long summer since. Woods predicament, when it became public in a local newspaper, divided her town. At school board meetings, and in online Facebook groups, the citizens of wealthy, White and conservative Chapin debated whether Wood should be fired. Republican state representatives showed up to a June meeting to blast her as a lawbreaker. The next month, a county NAACP leader declared her an advocate for the education of all students. The county GOP party formally censured the school board chair for failing to discipline Wood.
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Wood has kept a copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me on her bedside table since her students reported her for teaching from the book. (Will Crooks for The Washington Post)
{snip}
Story editing by Adam B. Kushner. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Copy editing by Jeremy Hester. Design by Jennifer C. Reed.
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By Hannah Natanson
Hannah Natanson is a Washington Post reporter covering national K-12 education. Twitter https://twitter.com/hannah_natanson
riversedge
(72,335 posts)imagine what it must be like to have to constantly be on guard like she has to be at this point.
jimfields33
(18,303 posts)English is usually Shakespeare which I did horribly but still was the curriculum. I thought that lesson plans were approved by the principal or department head. Clearly she had permission before she taught this.
marybourg
(13,011 posts)current than Shakespeare in their English classes. In fact Im pretty sure all do.
The Magistrate
(96,043 posts)In neither instance are you responsible for anything you have not personally done.
But one may be sure anyone who claims factual instruction on the 'color bar' in this country makes them ashamed to be white has been raised to be proud of it.
sinkingfeeling
(52,756 posts)lastlib
(24,518 posts)That is all.
MacKasey
(1,131 posts)OldBaldy1701E
(5,994 posts)Which is why we need to call them racists whenever we get the chance.
enough
(13,436 posts)They only say it makes them ashamed. So their feeling of shame is supposed to outweigh and suppress reality. Its voluntary societal psychosis.
Ziggysmom
(3,526 posts)Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it..
ret5hd
(21,222 posts)Those who can forget the past may FINALLY be persuaded to repeat it.
sinkingfeeling
(52,756 posts)their cushioned lives
OldBaldy1701E
(5,994 posts)Not having the most expensive car, or game system, or house, or computer, or a solid gold toilet... they know all about shame. The shame of the spoiled child who can't out d**k wave everyone else. It is as much envy as shame, however.