Mrs. Stanton

I used to hate school. The classes were boring and it was hard to keep myself interested. But in tenth grade, I had the most amazing English teacher, Mrs. Stanton. She held us to high standards, yet she was fair.

She told me, “Rhonda, I see how capable you are, and I’m grading you based on what I know you can do.” Her belief in me made me want to work harder and strive to earn the best grades in class.

She assigned us lots of books. In addition to the standards by the Brontë sisters, George Orwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Louisa May Alcott, we read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi, and Richard Wright’s Native Son. These stories were about people like me, people like my parents and grandparents. And seeing me and mine reflected in writing truly sparked my love for reading that endures to this day.

But the very books that inspired me upset other people in my town.