Moorhead School Board member Rachel Stone encourages teens through P’s and Q’s Leaderlicious program to reach for their dreams. (Photo/Russ Hanson.)
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
When Rachel Stone was the “detention lady” at Horizon Middle School, she says, “Teachers had me on speed-dial.” They faced an unusual dilemma: Some students enjoyed their time with her so much that they were purposely getting kicked out of class..
“Kids felt very comfortable with me. We’d talk,” she explains. “Lots of them are feisty and have tons of energy, talents and abilities, but they aren’t aware of them. Others are introverted and suffer from low self-esteem.
“Just being a brown lady makes a difference. They’re not used to seeing a brown lady in their school, and they’re drawn to me … not just diverse kids, but every nationality. Some have told me I am like a second mother to them – Mama Rachel. And all kids these kids really are like my kids.”
She laughs, then takes a serious turn: “I was hearing voices that needed to be heard. That’s where it started. I thought to myself, ‘So let’s try this and see what happens.’”
“This” is P’s and Q’s Etiquette. Starting with tea parties in the basement of her parents’ church, Latter Rain Ministries, the lessons in manners cloaked a broader purpose. “The whole idea was to train little girls to value themselves and carry themselves with grace,” she explains. “These children have such talents and abilities. I want to pull that out of them so they can see who they really can be. Manners are meshed and intertwined with building the confidence to achieve your dreams.”
Rachel knows more than a bit about that. Transplanted 20 years ago from the suburbs of Chicago, she arrived in Fargo-Moorhead with her husband and the first of her three sons when her parents, Paul and Gloria Shields, moved here to start a new ministry. She was a stay-at-home mom to Manny, Sam and then Gabe, now 22, 20 and 18, while her then-husband studied architecture at North Dakota State University, occasionally modeling for a local talent agency.
That’s where sponsors of the Mrs. North Dakota pageant spotted her and invited her to compete. “I was just floored,” she says now, “but I gave it a try.” On her first try in 2006, she was named first runner-up. The next year, she took home the crown. What followed was a whirlwind of celebrity status, from motivational and inspirational speaking to an appearance on a national television show and the covers of two magazines.
But something, she says, was missing. “I had what I thought I’d always wanted, but couldn’t fight the feeling of wanting to work with kids. Life is more than beauty and material things. I wanted to live a life with purpose.
“So I put a hold on all that and turned to what I was meant to do.” She looked for a job where she could be engaged with kids and took the first that was offered her: In 2010, Mrs. North Dakota became a lunch lady at Madison School in Fargo. There, watching some young girls and boys gobbling their meal without the benefit of the most basic table manners, the seeds of P’s and Q’s Etiquette were planted.
She was two years into her next position as Horizons’ detention lady when she founded the program that she’d envisioned. In 2017 P’s and Q’s became a reality. The nonprofit has taken root and grown. Today it’s a community partner of the Multicultural Alliance, a coalition of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) nonprofits led by Cultural Diversity Resources. She’s affiliated, too, with the nationwide Americorps Vista program.
Pandemic protocols have thrown a wrench into the works over the past year and one-half, along with vandalism of P’s and Q’s office earlier this summer. But as she teaches teens, Rachel has persevered. Weekly sessions have been held via video. This summer, the 10 girls in her intensive Leaderlicious program have met each week in parks and meeting rooms at the New American Development Agency in Moorhead.
Their sessions follow a curriculum she developed herself, structured around the acronym DREAM. D, she says, stands for decision – deciding to give yourself a chance. R is for realizing you have strengths and hidden talents. E stands for equipping yourself with the emotional gear and resources needed to be successful.
A? Aim – aim high. And M is the most important of all – move. “After you’ve set goals, discovered your abilities, built your confidence and self-esteem, you’re ready to create the opportunity to shine,” Rachel explains. “We’re building leaders who are ready to step out of their comfort zone and take off.”
She has done that again and again herself. Most recently, she ran for the Moorhead school board in 2018, something her younger self would never have dreamed of. She won. In that role, she was onstage again, presenting diplomas to Moorhead High School graduates in June. Among them: girls who were “graduates” of the P’s and Q’s program. It was, she says, one of the proudest moments of her life.
Rachel credits the way her parents raised her – “to use my hands in active service” – for her success in defining and realizing her calling to inspire and equip youngsters to reach for their dreams. “This is what I was born to do,” she reflects. “I wanted to be somebody special – and I’ve done it.
“There’s no greater joy in life than working with these kids.”
