Incident at Chapin High

Sep 19, 2023

The photo on the Washington Post home page of a teacher standing at the entrance to Chapin High School drew my eye to the headline: Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?. In 1970 I graduated from Irmo High, in the same school district as Chapin, which my younger sister and brother attended. I have family and friends there in the Dutch Fork region of South Carolina, people I care about. I also have family and friends who are teachers. The story hit home.

Mary Wood is from Chapin. She graduated from Chapin High and returned there to teach with a B.A. in English Literature and a Master’s of Teaching: Secondary Education. On her school web page she writes that she loves “yoga, Literature, and Gamecock Football!” Wood’s course schedule for 2023–24 includes Honors English and Advanced Placement language classes. Her students have 80-plus percent AP exam passage rates, above the national average (Natanson).

Irmo and Chapin have some liberals scattered around a school district that is about two-thirds white, but the area on the whole is quite conservative and Republican. Hannah Natanson reports in the Washington Post that this holds for students and faculty at Chapin High, where “amid a red sea, Chapin’s English department was a blue island. And Wood was known as the bluest of the bunch—conspicuous for decorating her classroom with posters of Malcolm X, Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes and LGBTQ pride stickers.” A former teacher described Wood’s “granola-crunchy vibe. It wouldn’t be difficult to guess how she votes walking into her room. I think that’s what made her a sort of lightning rod.”

Last year two students in Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition class reported her to the school board for teaching about race with assigned readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me (2015) and two accompanying videos, Systemic Racism Explained and The Unequal Opportunity Race. According to school records obtained by the Washington Post, one student wrote, “I understand in AP Lang we are learning to develop an argument and have evidence to support it, yet this topic is too heavy to discuss. I actually felt ashamed to be Caucasian.” Another wrote, “I feel, to an extent, betrayed by Mrs Woods. I feel like she has built up this idea of expanding our mind through the introduction of controversial topics all year just to try to subtly indoctrinate our class.” These are boilerplate far-right talking points. They could have been penned by Ron DeSantis’s speechwriter.

Issues of shame and indoctrination are raised without examination. It would be one thing if students were taught that they should feel shame for being white because of historical events that occurred before they were born. It is quite another to hold that teaching about darker episodes in American history, e.g., slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, treatment of indigenous people, is in and of itself tantamount to making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their race, which in South Carolina happens to be in violation of a state budget proviso that forbids a broad range of subject matter involving race and history.

The criteria establishing what is forbidden are vague and highly subjective. The presumption appears to be that mere exposure to certain material is sufficient to cause discomfort and guilt. It need not be explicitly taught that students have responsibility for historical events that occurred before they were born or current affairs over which they have no influence, much less control. Mere exposure is sufficient to run afoul of state regulations. There is in this an ironic echo of complaints by students of progressive sensibility about being exposed to language in literary works that they find hurtful or threatening.

At least two parents complained about what Wood was teaching. She was summoned to a meeting with the school’s assistant principal of instruction and the district’s director of secondary instruction, who used a set of talking points prepared ahead of time whose source the Post was unable to determine. The English Department chair who accompanied Wood was dismissed over her protests and “kept waiting outside as Wood underwent what the English teacher later described as an interrogation.” She was instructed to cease the assignment of Coates’s book and given two days off for “professional development” so she could come up with something to replace it (Natanson).

That was not the end of the affair. At school board meetings over the summer, there was calls for her termination from some quarters, support from others. At a June school board meeting, a woman complained about “teachings…of systemic racism,” denounced as inappropriate, divisive, and illegal. Another woman professed surprise that Wood was still employed. A third, a grandmother, thanked the board for opening the meeting with a prayer, which to her meant they were all Christians, and called for Wood’s firing. The Lexington County GOP chairwoman ranted about teaching CRT and education indoctrination. She called for implementation of policies that ban teaching of CRT and teachers who teach CRT.

At the next board meeting, July 17, a dozen teachers and residents spoke up on Wood’s behalf. They described her as a gifted teacher whose reputation was being smeared and refuted claims the assigned book promoted Marxist ideas that undermine America’s founding documents. “This book is not about Marxism,” one woman said before asking if those present had read the book. She has, she said, twice. And she may read it a third time.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s publicist got wind of the story and reached out for information. Coates called Wood to talk about what happened and offer his support. He went further, traveling to Chapin to meet her. “They went out to dinner. Coates came with her to the board meeting, sitting silently in the back. He signed her copy of Between the World and Me. He told her he appreciated her courage.” Note that he did not inject himself into the discussion at the board meeting as some might have done. He was there for her, not for himself. My estimation of him is elevated by that.

Enrollment in AP courses is by choice. Syllabi are provided at the beginning of the term. Students, parents, the school board, and administrators know going in what is being taught. Wood was blindsided by the furor. Her supervisor, the department chair, signed off on the Coates book. Students were also required to read a speech by Donald Trump, as a balancing conservative voice. She had taught the course the previous year using the same materials without complaint.

Wood described the lesson plan in an interview with ACLU South Carolina:

So the lesson plan began with a couple of videos to provide background information about the topic. It discussed racism, redlining, and access to education, which are all topics that Ta-Nehisi Coates covers in his [book]. That was to prepare students. Then I provided a lesson on annotation of texts according to AP standards and expectations, things which should be helpful for them on their essay and in collegiate-level reading and writing. Finally, I provided them with information about different themes that the book touches on, under the umbrella of the Black experience in modern America.
The idea was for them to read the book, identify quotes from the text that covered those different themes, select a theme for themselves, and then research what Coates said about that theme on their own to determine whether or not what he was stating held water—if they agreed with it, if it was valid. The goal was for them to look at a variety of texts from a variety of sources: “Here is an argument. Is it valid?” (Bowers, Meet Mary Wood)

The College Board curriculum says AP Lang can address “issues that might, from particular social, historical, or cultural viewpoints, be considered controversial, including references to…races” (Natanson). The aim is to promote critical thinking and the ability to present a rigorous case in support of one’s conclusions. Wood’s account of the course is supported by student experiences that were starkly different from those reported to the school board.

For the two days Wood got to teach “Between the World and Me,” classroom discussions were lively and open, said Connor Bryant, 17, one of the students who took AP Lang last year. Bryant, whose father is a Chapin English teacher, said his peers debated systemic racism and what it’s like to be Black in America, agreeing and disagreeing with Coates, without Wood picking a side.
“She did a really good job of keeping things not boring,” Bryant said. “People spoke up and they had different opinions—I honestly didn’t hear a single complaint about the book from anyone.”
Still, Bryant did remember a handful of disengaged students in the back of the room. They whispered to each other during class.

A recent Chapin graduate recalled that Wood taught Black, female and queer voices that most students never heard in other classrooms or at home. “It was like, ‘Oh, I got Miss Wood, and now I have to scoff and roll my eyes because she’s going to teach me things I don’t want to learn.’ A lot of kids did not like her.'”

Elizabeth Jordan, now 20, was one of those students. Raised in a conservative, Christian household, Jordan was unhappy to learn Wood would be her AP English teacher back in 2019, Jordan’s junior year.
At first, Jordan found Wood’s lessons unsettling—especially the classes focused on mass shootings or transgender rights, during which Wood held up left-leaning viewpoints for students’ inspection. Jordan could not understand why Wood was asking high-schoolers to discuss controversial current events.
“All I was thinking was, ‘This isn’t allowed, this just isn’t allowed,’” Jordan said. “Just because it was a complete 180 from anything I had known.” (South Carolina had not yet passed its legal restrictions on what teachers can say on these topics.)
Over the course of the year, though, Jordan’s opinion shifted. She noticed how students seemed to pay more attention in Wood’s class. She noticed that Wood never pushed students to adopt viewpoints but challenged them to account for their convictions. Now a junior in college, Jordan still remembers the debate that followed after a popular boy, the student body president, said transgender athletes should not be allowed to play sports.
“Okay,” Jordan recalls Wood saying, “can you explain that a little bit more?” (Natanson)

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a challenging, highly regarded, and for some people controversial writer. Between the World and Me received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015. It has more recently become the target of censorship bans across the country. I have not read the book, described 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 (Bowers), but I have read some of Coates’s essays in The Atlantic and elsewhere. One need not be of the MAGA persuasion to question some of his positions. He is an easy target for factions that promote sanitized versions of American history and culture, “colorblind,” as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives opined at a school board meeting (Natanson).

The brief videos about systemic racism and unequal opportunity are unimpressive. Wood explained that they were intended to provide background information about racism, redlining, and access to education, topics Coates discusses in his book. The videos take up genuine issues in crude, unreflective, animated presentations that amount to little more than agitprop. There should be better ways to introduce the topics.

As in so many instances, it comes down to how Wood used those videos and Coates’s text and exactly how she approached them in the classroom. Former students attested that she listened to students agreeing and disagreeing with Coates without picking a side. She did not push for them to adopt viewpoints, but challenged them to account for their convictions. That sounds like what a good teacher does.

Teachers are leaving the profession in increasing numbers for a variety of reasons. Many schools are understaffed.

In Washington state, more teachers left the classroom after last school year than at any point in the last three decades. Maryland and Louisiana saw more teachers depart than any time in the last decade. And North Carolina saw a particularly alarming trend of more teachers leaving mid-school year.
The turnover increases were not massive. But they were meaningful, and the churn could affect schools’ ability to help students make up for learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. This data also suggests that spiking stress levels, student behavior challenges, and a harsh political spotlight have all taken their toll on many American teachers. (Barnum, ‘I just found myself struggling to keep up’)

The political angle is my focus here. Teachers are targeted for teaching controversial subjects. The scope of what is controversial has expanded to include books once considered standard fare for high school students. School board members and librarians are threatened in the mania for banning books. New state laws restricting what can be taught enable one or two blockheads in a community to set off a firestorm where reputations are smeared and teachers disciplined or fired by school boards and administrators fearful of running afoul of regulations adopted to advance a political agenda.

Mary Wood returned to the classroom this fall shaken by her experience and unsure what to expect. In a summer journal entry, she wrote, “Teachers are afraid. Teachers are silent. Teachers cave.” At the first meeting of her AP Lang class she passed around a bag of shell fragments she found at the beach during vacation in July. She asked each student to take a shell.

The shells had once been whole, she said. Like a promise kept. A trust fulfilled.
But they broke. Maybe in stormy waters, or when they were dragged across the bottom of the ocean, or because a beachgoer stepped on them.
Sometimes, “we start to feel broken,” she said, “tossed around kind of like those shells. We’re chipped away at…broken from each other.”
She watched her students plunge their hands into the bag and fish for shells.
“But the thing is,” Wood said, “that’s not true.” (Natanson)

Mary Wood keeps the faith with the tremendous courage and inner resources required of teachers today more than ever. Her students are fortunate to have her. They and we lose when she and colleagues like her are driven from the profession.

Keep the faith. Stand with Mary Wood. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt

David Matthews Portable Bohemia

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