Dropping a wing 90 degrees on takeoff sure sounds like a departure stall to me. It's possible she was practicing a short or soft field takeoff where the margin between flying speed and stall speed are less than a normal takeoff. There's always the possibility of a thermal or windshear complicating things. I don't know what type of aircraft was involved. Some are less forgiving than others. For example, the 1969 AA-1 Yankee that I took my check ride in was notorious for poor stall behavior. It also had the glide ratio of the Space Shuttle. It's a fun plane but it can really bite you if you're not paying attention. The Piper Tomahawk has a bad reputation as well, perhaps unwarranted. Some people call it the "Traumahawk" when describing it's stall/spin behavior. I've never flown one so I don't know. Odds are AvWeb will have more details in their biweekly newsletter tomorrow. I'll post what I find out.

Canard or tandem wing designs like Rutan's are very stall resistant. However, only one of them ever went into production and that only lasted for a few years (Beech Starship). It's tough to get any plane certified for production and much more difficult for a "non-traditional" design. Since trainers are intended to prepare students to fly more advanced airplanes, a canard trainer wouldn't be very practical until other canard designs enter the market.

I got a ride in an Ercoupe once. It's a funky machine that's very stall resistant. Having no rudder pedals, it was virtually impossible to spin. However, it really wasn't all that much safer than other planes. It didn't have flaps and you couldn't slip to lose excess altitude. You landed it in a crabbed condition in a crosswind. In fact, when the Boeing 707 was entering service, aspiring pilots were trained on crabbed landings in Ercoupes. There wasn't sufficient clearance between the 707's engines and the runway to use normal crosswind landing techniques.