Project CommUNITY Women Breaking Barriers: Stacey Foster teaches algebra and life skills

By Carla Wade

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    BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (WVTM) — Stacey Foster is an eighth-grade algebra teacher who realizes her students face a lot of variables in life and for the brief time students are in her classroom at Hudson K-8, she wants to be a constant source of encouragement. And that includes showing them how to make a good first impression.

“I believe in being a well-rounded educator,” Foster said. “I believe that your math lesson is very important, as well as your life lessons.”

One of those lessons is first impressions. She holds a regular Dress for Success Day. It is part of an introduction to what she calls her “preparation for the future kit.”

From sport coats to Sunday shoes, bow ties and freshly pressed slacks and skirts, on Dress for Success Day, students are decked out in their best business attire. It is all a result of the student’s first impression of a young first-year teacher who dresses up every day.

“I’m going to keep it 100,” Foster said. “The kids taunted me from the first day I arrived all the way up until now. But now they know my age. They just recently found out last week that I am 22 years old. “

Foster is an early summa cum laude graduate of Alabama State University who was valedictorian of her Wenonah High School class. She said she wanted to set an example for her students through her attire.

“Every aspect counts,” she said. “Your first impression is always your lasting impression.”

But it is not just about the clothes on the outside. Foster knows her students are dealing with a lot of pressure on the inside. So, she takes the time in class to talk about it.

“Make sure that you are well grounded, that you’re safe. That you’re in a safe environment,” she said “Make sure that you are picking the right friends to choose to be with. Make sure that you are hanging with the right crowd.”

Every day her students see the fallout from gun violence in their community and how it is keeping far too many young people from realizing their potential.

“Where is the richest place on earth? And the answer to that is the graveyard,” Foster said. “And I tell them this all the time about the people who have passed on. We do not know, some of them may have had the cure to cancer. Some of them could have been the next President of the United States. So, America that is why we have to get in into the minds of our young people and meet them at their point of need.”

Foster said she is just passing on the confidence she got from her mother.

“She’s my greatest mentor, everything that I know,” she said. “And in the way I carry myself. All of that comes from my mom, Lisa Foster. And even with affirmations and everything that I am teaching, now. My mom has instilled these things in me.”

And she is achieving it with style.

“So every day, I just make sure that I come in and I give my students 110%,” she said. “Give them my all. Teach them what they need to know, to produce well-rounded students for the future.”

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