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Miss Sarah Foster: A tribute
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Published: November 17, 2009
In the simpler and more innocent times captured in American Graffiti, adolescent towns on the brink of cityhood often had a "Central High School." Charlotte was such a town.
On the north end of the Central High building, overlooking the ironically-named "Sugar Creek," was the Spanish Conversation class of Miss Sarah Foster -- perhaps the most successful teacher who ever undertook against all odds to enlighten me. I write "Miss" because "Ms." was just a spoken Southernism until feminists chose it as "correct."
Miss Foster -- as depicted in my graduation year book -- appears to be in her mid-fifties. For the camera, she is wearing the dimpled, almost cherubic, smile that we too seldom gave her much reason to display in the classroom.
When I knew Miss Foster, she had already successfully run the gantlet of those early classroom years which cull-out less dedicated teachers. She had already been annealed in searing fires fueled by students' adolescent, hormonal loutishness.
The fine, no-nonsense toughness to which she had been tempered was less appreciated before the Women's Movement gained traction. We irritating pupils who helped thicken the hides of women teachers bear more than a little blame for the numbers of them who retired as "Miss" this or that.
The same armor that kept them undaunted in the classroom could make them daunting in non-school situations. Miss Foster, fair and courteous until provoked, could daunt with the best of them when the occasion so required.
My mild dyslexia and poor study habits earned me just a "C" in Miss Foster's Spanish Conversation class. Even so, she encouraged me to enter a state Spanish contest of some sort and I remember getting an Honorable Mention. By my academic standards at the time, that amounted to a Rhodes Scholarship.
Miss Foster loved Spanish-speaking cultures, not just the language, and she took great pains to impress on her classes how varied and dissimilar they could be. A few hours a week of high school Spanish was hardly immersion learning but I'm sure Miss Foster dipped us a little deeper than a less gifted teacher would have bothered to.
One thing Miss Foster taught us proved golden—the most effective learning technique any of my teachers ever imparted. She urged us to conduct in Spanish all those little internal conversations that we all carry on silently in our heads.
These are the little imagined dialogs that cycle over and over as we rehash an unsatisfactory encounter ("I shoulda said") or rehearsals of planned manipulations of future social or business situations.
Most linguists agree that Spanish is among the easier languages to master at the tourist level -- accept for declining the verbs. Try sorting out the Spanish verbs for "I shoulda said" and you'll see that Miss Foster's recommended method was, though effective, not always easy.
At her suggestion, I tried it. It works. I still use it! And in addition to helping learn a language, it's even more useful in "Fostering" language retention. The internal debate technique works for all languages, not just Spanish. When I went away to college and took German, it helped.
Ten or twelve years after I left Central High, I spent several days in Spain. While I was hardly able to critique Cervantes with the hotel bell hop, I did get along without embarrassing myself -- that I know of. I never ordered items of clothing in restaurants or inquired of children "¿cuantos anos?" they had.
Over the years I visited with increasing confidence México, Colombia, Panamá and Spain itself more than once. One thing I'm sure Miss Foster taught us (but I failed to grasp) was the answer to the trick question: What language do they speak in Spain? Depending on where in Spain you happen to be, it could be Galega, Catalán, Valenciano, Vasco or Castillano.
Last year Mooresville, Appalachian State University and NTDA Energía -- Spanish company that Miss Sarah Foster posthumously helped bring to North Carolina -- hosted a conference on hydrogen railways in Valencia. I helped put it together and drafted invitations in Spanish to a few Central and South Americans whom we hoped would attend.
Which brings me to why I want to honor Miss Sarah Foster in this particular column. Last week I learned from the editor of a major regional Latino newspaper that a news item I submitted in Spanish has been accepted for publication. It's my first non-English publication. Miss Foster enabled it.
Over the years, I've been blessed with some exceptional teachers in the public schools and, later, in college. I stay in touch by e-mail with three of my Pfeiffer University profs, whom I still regard as among my working mentors and who tolerate me as an extended work in progress.
Miss Sarah Foster would, if still among the living, have to be well over a hundred. I wish I could hand her a copy of the published artículo when it comes out and say, ¡Muchísimas gracias, señora Foster!
(Mooresville's Stan Thompson is a retired strategic planner and environmental futurist for BellSouth Telecommunications. His column appears every other week in the Tribune. Email him at: HST2nd@aol.com)
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