Tusculum College is pleased to host two-time Watauga District Teacher of the Year, Mary Kent Whitaker, for the first Humanities Series event of the year. Whitaker will be giving a presentation on “Academic Freedom and Students’ Right to Read,” specifically discussing her and her students’ activism for the right to read Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits.”
This event will be held at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 11, in the lobby of the Thomas J. Garland Library on the Greeneville campus.
Whitaker, a high school English teacher in Boone, N.C., has been an educator for 38 years. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and is currently the Watauga County District Teacher of the Year. She also received this honor four years ago and is the only teacher in the history of Watauga County Schools to receive this honor twice.
Written in 1982, by the award-winning “The House of the Spirits” follows three generations of one family as they deal with the Chilean Revolution. This is the selected reading for the sophomore honors English class at Watauga High School.
Content in the book upset a parent in 2013, who formally requested the Watauga Board of Education take it off the required reading list for all sophomore honors English students
Whitaker and students in the class opposed the action, arguing that class members have alternatives to this book. They can read “Moby Dick,” take a different English class or take honors English online. Also, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction lists “The House of the Spirits” as appropriate reading for sophomores in North Carolina.
In February of this year, members of the Watauga County School Board finally settled the controversy. With a vote of 3-to-2, they decided to keep “The House of the Spirits” in the curriculum for sophomore honors English.
Whitaker graduated from Columbia College in South Carolina with a major in English and a minor in art. She received her master’s degree from Appalachian State University.
She began her career in education as a high school English teacher in 1971. Following that she was program assistant and then director of the Upward Bound program at Appalachian State University, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Eastern Caribbean and was director of the Center for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, N.C.
Whitaker’s teaching license includes high school English, middle school language arts, mentally disabled, learning disabled and academically gifted students. For 10 years she taught the academically gifted and students with learning disabilities in Ashe County, N.C., followed by four years teaching middle school language arts. She has been teaching high school English at Watauga High School for the last twelve years.
This event is part of the Humanities Series, sponsored by the Tusculum College English Department. The reading is free and open to the public. Arts and Lecture credit is available for Tusculum College residential students.
For more information, contact Dr. Clay Matthews, assistant professor of English, at cmatthews@tusculum.edu