O'Neal Elementary School's teacher of the year for 2017-18 has some unique insights on the challenges some students face. She has spent years teaching and counseling in inner-city and rural schools across Missouri and in the deep south.
Amber Foster has only been with the Poplar Bluff school district since 2015, but in that time she has made quite an impression. Her peers say she takes on any task in her role as an intervention specialist, even those others view as too challenging.
Foster says she loves her job, and while the bulk of her work is helping students with the basics, she also enjoys teaching them valuable life lessons.
"Like how to be better friends and how to survive on the playground with kids they might not get along with. I am very blessed to have a job that allows me to do both - that allows me to see the kids grow in their academics and their social skills as well," Foster said.
Foster, who holds a bachelor's in elementary education and a master's in counseling from Missouri State University, says it was her grandmother who inspired her at a young age to become a teacher.
"Since I was a small child, my grandmother would play school with me and let me be the teacher and let me be the student. I would play school with my siblings and any friends I could get to play with. So my grandma just really instilled a love of learning and helping others," she said.
Foster began her career as a caseworker with the Georgia Department of Social Services. In 2005 she returned to education, working as a teacher at Mountville (Georgia) Elementary School and as a counselor at Heard County and Ephesus, Georgia, elementary schools.
Upon returning to Missouri in 2010, she would work in one of the most challenging roles in her career. Foster says her time at the St. Louis Center for Family Development alternative high school helped her see the effects on a student's education of a difficult home life.
"The kids there would be in gangs at the age of 5 or 6 or 10, but only because they had generations ahead of them in the same gang. They had to walk through that gang territory to walk to their house. So how do you bring up kids who are afraid of getting killed if they are not part of that group," Foster said.
"But they listened to me and they learned from me," she said.
After working in St. Louis for two years, Foster took a position as a third-grade teacher at Carthursville, Missouri, schools, an area of the state that also faces economic barriers.
"Of course that is one of the poorest counties in Missouri and is very impoverished. I went there and saw kids who thought they were street kids and I would say to them you do not know the first thing about being a street kid," Foster laughed.
"So I really just called them out on that, but it opened my eyes to the fact that kids need to be taught there is a better way and a better life," she said.
Foster worked as a counselor at Neelyville schools from 2013 to 2015 before accepting her current job at O'Neal. She says all her experiences - from working in in troubled inner-city schools to the most economically challenged - have helped her become the teacher she is today.
"(Poverty) is a great barrier and a great factor (in learning ability). Sometimes we teachers forget that it is difficult for children to come in and sit in a chair, have their pencil sharpened and their paper ready to go when they are not sure when their next meal is going to come, or who will greet them at the school bus, if anybody," she said.
Foster said she was honored to receive the teacher of the year award, something she did not expect having been there for only two years.
"I was really humbled. This is my second year being here, so just getting to know all these wonderful teachers and having a wonderful principal to guide us and lead us in the direction of helping kids has been awesome," Foster said.
"So I was really shocked and thankful the teachers recognized me for that," she said.
Foster is currently working toward a doctorate in educational leadership at William Woods University in Fulton, Mo., and says she may someday aspire to be a school administrator.