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What did Mary Wood do? South Carolina teacher reported for teaching Ta-Nehisi Coates Between t

Mary Wood is in the news after she was reported by students for teaching from a book called Coates. “Between the world and me”.

Mary Wood has experienced a situation in the past year that is becoming more and more common among educators, librarians, and school administrators across the nation: she is being pursued by activists who want to censor what books are available in libraries and what discussions take place in classrooms.

Who is Mary Wood?

Mary Wood works as an English teacher at Chapin High School in Chapin, South Carolina. She used “Between the World and Me,” a nonfiction book by Ta-Nehisi Coates about the Black experience in America, as part of a lesson plan on research and argumentation in her advanced placement class, as first reported in The State. She was told to stop teaching the book by district officials. They claimed it broke a state budget clause that forbids a wide range of topics involving race and history.

“Between the World and Me” was published in 2015 as an open letter by Coates to his son, reflecting on currents of hope and despair in the struggle for racial justice in the United States. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, whose judges said, “Incorporating history and personal memoir, Coates has succeeded in creating an essential text for any thinking American today.”

What is the Coates book about?

Across the nation, censorship campaigns focusing on books by and about people of color have targeted Coates’ book. According to PEN America, 30% of the titles that were banned in the first half of the 2022–2023 academic year dealt with race, racism, or had characters of color. Along with Texas, Florida, Missouri, and Utah, South Carolina is one of the five states where book bans have been most common.

Mary Wood has found herself right in the middle of this national assault on the freedom to read and learn.

As a result, the lesson plan started with a few videos that gave background knowledge on the subject. It covered topics like racism, redlining, and educational access, all of which Ta-Nehisi Coates covers in his book. It was done to get the students ready. After that, I taught them how to annotate texts in accordance with AP standards and expectations. This should help them with their essays and with college-level reading and writing.

Last but not least, I gave them information on the various subjects the book covers under the general heading of the Black experience in contemporary America.

The idea was for them to read the book, pick quotes from it that addressed those various themes, choose a theme of their own, and then independently research what Coates had to say about that theme to decide whether or not they agreed with it or if it was a valid point.

Student report Mary Wood

Mary Wood was criticized for her instruction on race by two students in her high school English class, who then brought the issue to the local school board. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” a book that explores what it means to be Black in America, was the reading for Wood’s all-White AP English Language and Composition class.

In emails, the students complained that the book made them ashamed to be White, in contravention of a South Carolina law that prohibits teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of their race.

The situation involving Wood received divisive national attention. Wood’s “race-shaming against White people” was condemned by conservative media outlets and commentators. Left-leaning media hailed her as a martyr to “cancel culture,” the most recent victim of the nation’s raging debates over how to teach about race, racism, and history since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Wood is not the first educator to be harmed by political controversies; according to a previous Post report, at least 160 educators have lost their jobs since the pandemic started as a result of these discussions.

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    Carisa Kissane

    Update: 2024-05-21