Mrs. Dr. Stone: A History

By Elisabeth Housley (’19)

Over Legacy’s 22 years, certain teachers have become staples in the Upper School. Many of them have been on campus as long as the beloved South Campus chapel, and their impacts span years of alumni.

Kristin Stone, who began teaching full time at Legacy in 2014, has already joined their ranks. Her history students know her to be goofy, curious, and joyful. For many, she’s a steady source of wisdom, and the occasional Hershey Kiss.

Still, when asked if she was willing to be interviewed for a feature in Impact, Mrs. Stone was surprised. Her first response was, “Why me? I’ve only been at Legacy for seven years.”

Mrs. Stone — or Mrs. Dr. Stone, as she’s affectionately called — earned bachelor’s degrees in English and history at Texas Tech. She then headed to the University of California Davis for advanced degrees in history. By the time she completed her doctorate, she and her husband, Nathan, had moved to the Dallas area. Mrs. Stone remembers that stage of life well, laughing at how she’d work on her dissertation while her daughter, Rebekah, napped. Knowing she was dependent on God to get through the writing process, she says, she talked through each chapter aloud with him.

For several weeks after Rebekah was born, Mrs. Stone drove from the family’s Plano apartment to their new

NHS officers and their advisers. Left to right: Ms. McKnelly, Jonathan Darrell, Trenton Balcombe, Adam Lisle, Drew Davison, and Mrs. Stone.

MRS. DR. STONE: A HISTORY

home in Little Elm to paint, clean, and slowly unpack their things. Every day, she passed Legacy on her route. Until then, she had never heard of Christian schools, but she knew a Legacy family from church. She asked the mother for 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.

Immediately after she completed her PhD, Mrs. Stone applied to teach history at the Upper School. She was pregnant at the time, and though she wasn’t hired then, she believed having a baby was pushing her toward something more meaningful to her than her current position as a college professor. When a part-time position opened in the history department, it was offered to her, but she knew that for her family’s sake, she could accept only full-time work.

Kevin Mosely, the Upper School principal, explained that the only other opening was as a part-time English teacher. Mrs. Stone responded, “Actually, I have degrees in both,” and took the job. Now she teaches on-level US history and JBU history, Legacy’s concurrent enrollment option through John Brown University, and is a faculty adviser for Legacy’s chapter of the National Honor Society. Mrs. Stone didn’t always want to be a teacher: “Never. No,” she’ll say. She even initially disliked history, majoring in it only so she could be a lawyer, and used to say that she’d never attend graduate school or live in California. Now, she says, “All the things I said I was never going to do, God orchestrated all of them. And not begrudgingly, but actually changed my heart so that I wanted to do those things.”

Mrs. Stone’s earliest aspiration was to be a sample lady at Sam’s Club or an Imagineer for Disney, but now she pours her creativity into her lesson plans, realizing that she didn’t actually 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 program, the only things Mrs. Stone took pictures of were the high school boys

Mrs. Stone and Katie Cortese (’22) volunteer to help rejuvenate the Old Irish Bed and Breakfast in Denton.

who came to watch their reading buddies perform. It’s times like these, she says, when she most sees God in action.

Mrs. Stone is also her students’ biggest fan. Not only does she squeal with excitement when grading their papers, but she also glows with pride when speaking of the students who have shaped her teaching and made an impact on her. She recalls having Natalie Embry ’19 in class: “Natalie was just really interested, and every day I’d go home and think, ‘Okay, how can I present this in a way that Natalie will love?’”

The impact, of course, goes both ways. According to Natalie, “Mrs. Stone was always willing to go the extra mile for her students. She made learning so fun and creative. I couldn’t wait to walk in her door for history class. It was the best part of my day.”

Mrs. Stone can be somewhat selfeffacing. For example, she prefers the courtesy title “Mrs.” to “Dr.” — she says she doesn’t feel all that smart and dislikes when people say she’s “earned” the title, insisting that she doesn’t deserve any of the blessings God has given her. But she also acknowledges that she doesn’t need any help thinking well of herself, and uses “Mrs.” as a reminder that she is called to be one with her husband, not with her academic success.

Despite Mrs. Stone’s claim that she is often prideful and no more intelligent than anyone else, students describe her as highly insightful and never hesitant to say, “Hmm. I don’t know the answer to that. Let me get back to you.” The students who pass under her instruction say they’re better researchers, writers, and young adults because of her guidance and gentleness, both inside the classroom and outside of it.

So in answer to the question “Why me?” Mrs. Stone needs only to ask her kids. Says Clay Blanscet ’19: “Mrs. Stone is one of the best teachers I had during my seven years at Legacy. Her love for teaching and the great care she has for all her students were constantly on display. She’d always ask me how I was doing even just passing in the halls. I’m so grateful for her and always will be. Her love for Christ was embedded

in every lesson and she showed how Christ is a constant throughout history and still today. There are very few teachers quite like Mrs. Stone, and I hope she knows the impact she’s had on many students’ lives.”

Elisabeth Housley (‘19) is a junior at the University of Oklahoma studying public and nonprofit administration and Hebrew and hopes to work in fundraising and development after graduation.