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. The parents of some of my classmates found out about the books we were reading and complained to the school board. They said things like:

“Our kids need to read the classics, not this immoral and salacious material!”

“These books are indoctrinating our kids into communism!”

The school board said we weren’t allowed to read certain books in our classes, and they were removed from the school library. But Mrs. Stanton insisted that she have us read those books, even if it meant buying them with her own money.

Then, one Monday morning, we walked into English class, and Mrs. Stanton was gone. We were shocked. Our school principal, Mr. Hall, stood in front of her empty desk and told us, “Mrs. Stanton will no longer be your English teacher. She has decided to leave the Apple Grove School District for other opportunities.” In the middle of the school year? No way.

I thought I would never see Mrs. Stanton again.

Then, one spring Saturday, after I finished my shift at the bagel shop, I headed to the bookstore next door. I loved searching through the inventory and using my paycheck to buy novels I wanted to read that the library didn’t have. It was a great way to kill time before my dad came to pick me up.

As I sat on a wooden bench in one of the aisles, leafing through an exciting-looking book, I heard a voice.

“Hi, Rhonda!”

I looked up.

“Oh my God - hi, Mrs. Stanton!”

“May I sit next to you?”

“Of course!”

She sat next to me and asked, “So, what book are you taking a look at?”

I looked down at the colorful book in my hands. “It’s Slay by Brittney Morris. It looks cool, I think I wanna get it.”

“You should. It’s a great novel.”

I then asked her what I had wanted to know for months. “What happened? You were there, and then you were gone.”

Mrs. Stanton took a deep breath. “Well Rhonda, I taught using books that were banned by the school board. They ordered me to stop, but I refused. I refused to allow the fear and ignorance of the school board to keep me from doing right by you and the other students at Washington High. I did what I had to do. So, the administration fired me.”

“Oh dang. They told us you chose to leave, but we knew you wouldn’t just leave us like that. But was it worth it?”

She smiled. “Yes, Rhonda. You could be doing other things with your free time, but you’re right here, in the books, embracing who you are and expanding your world by reading. I would do it all over again a million times. For that, it was worth it.”

***

The Conviction - A June 2024 Unofficial Challenge by Belle