MRS. DR. STONE: A HISTORY
home in Little Elm to paint, clean, and
meaningful to her than her current
Mrs. Stone didn’t always want to be a
slowly unpack their things. Every day,
position as a college professor. When a
teacher: “Never. No,” she’ll say. She even
she passed Legacy on her route. Until
part-time position opened in the history
initially disliked history, majoring in it
then, she had never heard of Christian
department, it was offered to her, but she
only so she could be a lawyer, and used
schools, but she knew a Legacy family
knew that for her family’s sake, she could
to say that she’d never attend graduate
from church. She asked the mother for
accept only full-time work.
school or live in California. Now, she says,
babysitter recommendations and was given the name of a Legacy student, whom Mrs. Stone would eventually teach. Even then, Mrs. Stone says, the Legacy community was in play.
“All the things I said I was never going to Kevin Mosely, the Upper School
do, God orchestrated all of them. And not
principal, explained that the only other
begrudgingly, but actually changed my
opening was as a part-time English
heart so that I wanted to do those things.”
teacher. Mrs. Stone responded, “Actually, I have degrees in both,” and took the
Mrs. Stone’s earliest aspiration was
Immediately after she completed her
job. Now she teaches on-level US history
to be a sample lady at Sam’s Club or
PhD, Mrs. Stone applied to teach history
and JBU history, Legacy’s concurrent
an Imagineer for Disney, but now she
at the Upper School. She was pregnant
enrollment option through John Brown
pours her creativity into her lesson
at the time, and though she wasn’t hired
University, and is a faculty adviser for
plans, realizing that she didn’t actually
then, she believed having a baby was
Legacy’s chapter of the National Honor
pushing her toward something more
Society.
dislike history, just the way it was taught to her. She’s always reimagining and adding to how she presents curriculum, so juniors and seniors in her US history classes might experience anything from a historical escape room to scrapbooking projects. In the fall of 2020, Mrs. Stone’s on-level students each picked a topic, such as villains or fashion, on which to focus their research throughout the year. These ideas are based on the three skills she wants to instill in her students regarding historical exploration — Acquire, Analyze, Argue — and on her philosophy that “God’s story of his people is a story of beauty in brokenness, and if we’re not identifying both in history, then we’re not telling the truth,” she says. Even more than curriculum design, however, Mrs. Stone loves the big family she has at Legacy. She refers to her students as her kids, and one of her favorite Legacy memories is when an elementary education intern attended a birthday party for her son, Josh. At her daughter’s second-grade Christmas
Mrs. Stone and Katie Cortese (’22) volunteer to help rejuvenate the Old Irish Bed and Breakfast in Denton.
22
LEGACY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY
program, the only things Mrs. Stone took pictures of were the high school boys
