Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?

Mary Wood’s school reprimanded her for teaching a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now she hopes her bond with students can survive South Carolina’s 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 didn’t 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 Wood’s 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 Coates’s “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 Coates’s 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. Wood’s 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.

{snip}



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]

1. I fear for all teachers that want-and need to teach about our past-the good and the bad. I can not

imagine what it must be like to have to constantly be on guard like she has to be at this point.

[jimfields33]

8. I think history class would be a better class to teach it.

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]

14. Some schools also teach literature more

current than Shakespeare in their English classes. In fact I’m pretty sure all do.

[The Magistrate]

2. It's As Ridiculous To Be Proud You're White As It Is To Be Ashamed Of It

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]

10. +100

[lastlib]

3. I f*cking HATE right-wingers.

That is all.

[MacKasey]

4. Racists don't like to be called racists

[OldBaldy1701E]

12. No, they certainly do not.

Which is why we need to call them racists whenever we get the chance.

[enough]

5. Strange. They never say that these things didn't happen in history.

They only say it makes them ashamed. So their feeling of shame is supposed to outweigh and suppress reality. It’s voluntary societal psychosis.

[Ziggysmom]

6. Philosopher George Santayana said it best,

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”.

[ret5hd]

7. A more accurate (in todays world) paraphrase might be:

“Those who can forget the past may FINALLY be persuaded to repeat it.”

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Poor little snowflakes had to experience 'shame'. Probably for the first time in

their cushioned lives

[OldBaldy1701E]

13. Nah, they experience it all the time.

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.

[Celerity]

11. K & R for visibility