Amy Rainer of Mountain Brook, Alabama, teaches the quiet grammar of grace - shaping children and adults minds on how to listen with the eyes, speak with kindness, and move through the world with intention.
Story by Jennifer Kornegay, Photos by Brit Huckabay
While the girls and boys who complete Amy Rainer’s etiquette classes know how to navigate an intricate, multi-utensil table setting and understand the significance of simple gestures like holding a door and saying “please,” the point of Amy’s work is not training children to be pretentious or showy with their skills. Instead, she empowers young people to pour kindness into every situation they face, from a fancy dinner with grandma to meeting a new person to interacting with their own parents.
“I believe good manners have two parts: how we present ourselves and how we treat others,” Amy says. And in her Etiquette With Amy classes, with approximately 10 to 12 children per class, Amy heavily emphasizes how to treat others.
Like many good ideas, Etiquette With Amy began as the solution to a problem; as a young elementary school teacher fresh out of college, Amy needed some extra income. She had fond memories of etiquette classes she attended in childhood, and knew she had the teaching chops, so in 2000, she started after-school etiquette classes for the girls in her third-grade class.
“It took off, and I loved it,” Amy says.
For years, it was an unwritten rule that when your daughter was enrolled in third grade, she’d also enroll in Amy’s etiquette class. In 2010, she was diagnosed with lupus, which slowed her down, but still, Amy managed.
