‘FOSTER’ CARE

To accommodate space requirements because of COVID-19 this school year, Joanne Foster was forced to relocate her first-grade classroom at St. Madeleine Sophie School to the basement of the parish’s old church.

But that was no problem for Foster who transformed the space into an oasis for the kids. It’s a setting that’s expertly camouflaged with red and green colors filling the walls, paper-plate snowmen and snowflakes dangling from the ceiling, and penguins and polar bears made out of construction paper taped to the front of student’s desks.

“I don’t even feel like we’re in the basement of the church,” said Sue Brenner, Foster’s current teaching assistant and dear friend for the past 30 years. “It’s very comfortable and we’re at home.”

Foster stresses without Brenner — who won the Mother ­Frances Cabrini Distinguished School Support Award last year — she would not be able to do her job.

“We always say the two of us, we’re a package deal. We finish each other’s sentences, together we have one brain, we’ve been together for so long,” Foster said.

This year, however, it is Foster’s turn to be recognized as the winner of the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Distinguished Elementary School Teacher Award for the 2020-21 school year. The award honors a Catholic school teacher who has promoted a school’s Catholic educational vision and who has a strong awareness of a school’s Catholic identity and mission. The teacher is one who has demonstrated excellence in teaching skills and has a positive effect on the moral growth of students.

Foster, nearing her 40th year teaching at St. Madeleine Sophie School, remembers not wanting to go into teaching when she was a young student at St. Luke’s School in Schenectady. Every morning she watched the nuns stacking nickels and dimes for milk money.

“I just had this vivid memory of ‘I am NEVER going to be a teacher because I can’t count that money.’ ” Foster said laughing.

Her mind-set shifted around 14, when she began babysitting practically all the kids in her neighborhood. 

“I had a racket going. I had money, my sisters and my brother were borrowing money from me, and I just had so many people (to watch),” Foster said. “I would just sit there and hours would go by and I would do all these silly things with these kids and I’d be like ‘I just like being around them,’ so that was it.” 

After graduating from The College of Saint Rose, Foster began teaching second grade at St. Madeleine Sophie while working on her master’s degree at night. After 16 years, she was sure she would teach second grade forever, but then a kindergarten position opened.

Initially she thought she could never teach kindergarten, because she didn’t know how to play piano. Where she got the idea that playing piano was a mandatory skill for teaching kindergarten, she admits she does not know.

“I knew the kindergarten teacher here and she didn’t know how to play the piano, but I kept telling my principal, ‘I don’t know how to play the piano.’ She’s like ‘Jo what’s the problem?!’ So I’m like, ‘Ok I’ll try it,’ but I just didn’t think I was cut out for it,” Foster said. “Well, I loved it.”

After 10 years of teaching kindergarten, when a first-grade position opened, Foster jumped at the opportunity as teaching first grade was her first choice when studying literacy for her bachelor’s degree.

Going on year 13 with first graders, reading the “Frog and Toad” series by Arnold Lobel is a highlight she says, because it makes reading and finding sight words click for many of her students who previously struggled.

When Foster was young, she remembers everyone predicting she would be married with hordes of children of her own since she enjoyed cooking, cleaning and waiting on others so much.

“I always said, ‘God’s got a plan. I don’t get what it is because why am I not getting married and having kids?’ And he did (have a plan), he gave me kids! LOTS of kids,” Foster said. “So it’s that plan that you think you’ve got it mapped out, but God’s got a bigger, better, different plan.”
Now, she considers the school home.

“I live down the road, I’m here more than I’m at my home. I live by myself and, you know, it’s just home. It wasn’t a job, to me it’s a vocation I had chosen,” Foster said.

Approaching four decades of teaching, seeing her students learn is still her favorite part of the job.

“Seeing the accomplishment in the kids, seeing that sense of ‘Yep, I understand what you’re teaching me’ and just the excitement of it, that to me is everything,” Foster said.