No student could attend Plant City High School without hearing about Leslie B. Rice.
Mrs. Rice was the advanced placement language arts teacher at Plant City High School, a class she brought to the school and taught with extraordinary results.
Mrs. Rice died Saturday, July 4, at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa after battling breast cancer for the second time. Within a day of her passing, her friends, coworkers and former students took to social media to share their fondest memories of a teacher who changed lives every time she stepped into a classroom.
Mrs. Rice’s students, whom she lovingly called her “brats,” remember her as being funny, sarcastic and able to make anyone feel special — even through the occasional throw of an eraser across the classroom. Throughout her career, Mrs. Rice taught her students not only the importance of the English language, but instilled in them a love of learning and of the written word.
HER SCHOOL
Deanna Hurley was one of Mrs. Rice’s students in 2002. As a high school student, Hurley wanted to be a doctor but ended up switching her major to language arts while she was in college. After telling her former high school teacher of the change, Mrs. Rice laughed and told Hurley that she had been a language arts person at heart all along.
“She spoke to our self-esteem,” Hurley said. “She made us feel good, capable and confident. Her class was like your safe space.”
Although Mrs. Rice cared for her students, she made themdo their best and refused to accept laziness, Hurley said. Even on their worst days, Mrs. Rice was always there to offer a smile or a word of encouragement.
“You looked forward to her class,” Hurley said. “She was amazing.”
Stacy Beauchamp was another of Mrs. Rice’s AP students in 2002. Like Hurley, Mrs. Rice also had an impact on Beauchamp’s course of study in college. Beauchamp graduated from University of South Florida with a bachelor’s degree in English education in 2008.
“Mrs. Rice was a huge factor in my decision to go into teaching,” Beauchamp said. “I wanted to be a teacher just like her. I wanted to inspire my students to love literature and to allow it to change their lives.”
Josh Kent was Mrs. Rice’s teaching assistant his senior year of high school, in 2009.
“I think what everyone would agree on is that she was a genuine person,” Kent said. “The best thing was seeing her interact with a new class. It wasn’t just your average class, it was interactive.”
Kent and his friends got Mrs. Rice a cactus as a joke.
“We were on her side,” Kent said, noting that students frequently ate lunch with Mrs. Rice. “She was very sweet to you, very caring.”
Regardless of a student’s past or present academic performance, Mrs. Rice continued to support them and make them feel as though they could do anything.
Danielle Fournier, who took Mrs. Rice’s AP English class in 2003, said that she was never good at academics. After being invited to join the AVID program at the end of her sophomore year, Fournier recalls that many teachers did not hide their doubts about her abilities.
Mrs. Rice did the opposite.
“She looked me in the eye and told me I was smart,” Fournier said. “She was the most intelligent woman I had ever met, and she thought I was smart … She was so candid and sincere. Those words changed my view of who I was and who I could be.”
Alan Schism, one of Mrs. Rice’s coworkers, is the AP English literature teacher at PCHS. A wall with a swinging door separated his classroom from Mrs. Rice and her students. As Mrs. Rice eloquently scolded her students, Schism would write down what she said, calling the statements “rice-isms.”
Schism, who began working at PCHS in 1995, believed that Mrs. Rice was the mom of the school.
“Kids took her class just because she taught it,” Schism said. “She didn’t allow them to be mediocre. She demanded excellence from them.”
Schism says that Mrs. Rice saw beyond students’ outside and into their personality and character. Regardless of a how a student felt about themselves, Mrs. Rice would make them feel worthy.
“There’s no class that teaches how to do that,” Schism said. “Her heart was just so compassionate.”
The compassion Mrs. Rice had lasted her entire career.
Luis Arellano, one of Mrs. Rice’s most recent students, believed that Mrs. Rice seemed to have the answer to almost every problem — literature related or otherwise.
“Last year, every time I was having a bad week or day I would always go to Mrs. Rice to go and give her a hug and get some encouraging words from her,” Arellano said. “She always knew just what to say to everyone and seemed to figure everyone out before they even had time to figure themselves out.”
HER FAMILY
Dale Rice, Mrs. Rice’s husband, began working at Plant City High School 34 years ago, where he met her. The two were set up on a date in Brandon at a birthday party May 11, 1990.
“I was the only one driving back to Plant City, and she needed a ride,” Rice said. “We’ve been together ever since.”
Rice said that he has been very touched by the response to his wife’s passing on social media.
“That was the lasting legacy and effect that she had,” he said. “Anybody that knew her was lucky, anybody that had her class was luckier. She was very good at what she did.”
Although she wasn’t a baseball fan when they first met, Mrs. Rice picked up on America’s favorite pastime when her two sons, Dane and Drew, became interested in watching the game. In the summers, Mrs. Rice and her husband formed “Baseball Brewery” tours, where they would road trip to baseball stadiums across the nation, sightseeing along the way. Rice noted that they only had about five stadiums left to visit, and that he will be finishing the list with his sons.
“She was smart, educated, good-looking, and opposites attract,” Rice said jokingly.
Mrs. Rice is survived by her husband Dale, a teacher and tennis coach at Plant City High School and her two sons, Drew and Dane. A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday, July 11, at the PCHS gym. Casual attire in school colors is encouraged.
A LASTING TRIBUTE
Mrs. Rice’s family has decided to create a scholarship with the money raised from t-shirts and other funds. The scholarship will be called the Leslie S. B. Rice Memorial Scholarship and will be awarded to a student who has continued to reach for success while overcoming hardships.
TO SIGN THE PETITION
Contact Emily Topper at etopper@plantcityobserver.com