Gunston ES Teacher Loved Her Job

When Ayanna Stewart was in tenth grade at Paul VI High School in Haddonfield, N.J., when she took one of those career aptitude tests that high school students have come to dread. When the results advised her to become a teacher she thought it was the last thing she would ever do for a living.

When informed of her decision, her mother, Delois, told her, "Ayanna you already are a teacher."

Young Ayanna had a penchant for the details. "Organize, organize, organize. That was what she liked to do. And she was really good at it," Delois Stewart-Heath says about her daughter now. Ayanna agreed and began charting a course for a career in education.

Mrs. Stewart-Heath saw a lot of herself in her daughter. "I used to tell her that she was a little version of me."

This should not have come as a surprise as mother and daughter were very close. "For a long time, it was just her and me," Stewart-Heath says.

After graduating from the suburban Philadelphia high school, Ayanna attended Howard University in Washington, DC on a scholarship. She earned her Bachelor's in human development and her Master's in early childhood education in five years. When she passed away from allergy-related complications, she was working on a second Master's in educational technology.

She came to Gunston Elementary in the fall of 2004 as a student teacher and stayed on as a substitute teacher in the spring. The following school year she began teaching full-time at Gunston. Over the course of the following five years, Ayanna taught first and second grade.

"Ayanna really wanted to teach the youngest children," her mother says. "She wanted the opportunity to mold them and reach them while she still could make an impact."

Ayanna had great affection for the Gunston Community, telling her mother in a letter that she felt "valued and supported."

Mrs. Stewart-Heath spoke with her daughter virtually every day, so in the second week of July when a day passed without them communicating, she immediately knew something was wrong. Ayanna's passing was especially tragic because, at 27, she was just beginning her life, both professionally and personally.  She was already an accomplished teacher and in October 2009 she purchased her own home.

While there is little doubt that Ayanna will be missed by those who loved her, it is equally doubtless that the impact she had on her pupils will leave the kind of legacy that would make anyone proud, especially her mom.