Transforming a storage area into a vibrant venue for performance at Normandy Middle School took more than a creative mind – it took leadership and vision to turn hopes, dreams and aspirations of urban students into dance, song and drama.
Duane M. Foster was the perfect choice to get it done.
A Broadway performing artist with roles in “Ragtime,” “Porgy and Bess,” “A House of Flowers” and “Purlie,” Foster made what he thought was a temporary move back to St. Louis.
“I came back in 2006 not to teach, I came home to take a break,” Foster said. He had been a full-time performer on the production “Ragtime.” After the show closed, it was time to re-group.
“I was doing a lot of gigs that were seven weeks here, 12 weeks there –it wasn’t consistent enough for me and I didn’t feel like I was making any type of impact on anything,” Foster said. “So I had a meltdown and came home.
Neither his “meltdown” nor his break time lasted very long. Within two days, one of his mentors presented him with a challenge that took him in a different direction.
“I received a call from my mentor [Jeffrey Rone], who helped me get off to college, saying they needed at teacher at the middle school,” Foster said.
“The phone call led me to the middle school to be a sub initially, but after they saw my credentials and saw I had the academic requirements, they were like, ‘Why don’t you stay for a while and see how you like it?’”
Foster completed the school year and went back to New York the next summer. That didn’t last long either.
“The second day into the school year, the principal called and asked me if I would come back and basically create a theatre program in the middle school,” Foster said. “I thought about it for a week and came home, and I’ve been here ever since.”
Initially it was hard, Foster said, but it’s easy now.
“My life was in New York – my apartment – other job opportunities came up that I had to turn down, but the growth that I saw in the Theatre Department made up my mind.”
Parents helped him clean and clear off the stage and Foster put together the “Soul Shack Café” in the place where old desks, books and equipment were once stashed. Students impersonated Motown groups with song and dance, and it was a hit.
“That was really, really wonderful for three years, then the choir teacher from the high school retired,” Foster said.
Foster now serves as the fine arts chairperson and choir, drama, and dance director at Normandy High School. He directs the Normandy Chorale and is the founding director of the Normandy After School Dance Academy.
“They see that they have goals and my whole lesson always starts with the finished product,” he said.
“We look at what we want to look like before we start any song, any dance, any play or musical – we see the final picture and we work backwards. Success is tangible for them. They’ve tasted success, so they try to get success in other avenues of their lives.”
Success through fine arts is vital for students who may come to school with issues, he said.
“It’s more than a selfish thing – it’s kind of like you are giving something of yourself unselfishly and the universe decides to give something wonderful back to you,” Foster said.
“Whether it’s peaceful – it could be something monetary, but it’s something that gives you validation and gives you a purpose.”
That validation may be making its way into other classrooms as well. Foster said he received lots of comments about his dance students in particular.
“When they come in the classroom, it seems like they are really engaged and ask very important questions and they want things to be right,” he said. “For the first time this past semester, I really tracked my students in a very detailed manner attendance-wise as well as academics, and over 80 percent of the kids had perfect attendance.”
To improve academics, Foster started a recording studio program “for my boys who like to be boys and come to school when they want to come to school and do what they want to do when they get there.”
“The incentive was you maintain a 2.0 [GPA] in every class and you come to class every day and you could use the recording studio,” Foster said.
“I ended the year with eight boys in the program who at the end of the year I know for a fact they would have either ended up at (the Positive Alternative Learning school) or would have been home.”
Those eight are students from last year are now the leaders of the program for this year.
“Hopefully, I can pull in some more young men,” Foster said.
Foster is an alumni of Morehouse College in Atlanta where he majored in vocal music and is a member of the Phi Mu Alpha music fraternity. It was his other mentor, Dwayne Buggs, a longtime Normandy educator, who steered him to Morehouse.
“He got the application for Morehouse and basically made me fill it out,” Foster said. “It’s a full circle moment as I’ve been able to send two of my students to Morehouse.”
Foster received his dance training and certification from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. His After School Academy hosted the Houston Ballet and Alvin Ailey in residencies two years ago.
Last year, Foster received the Yale Distinguished Music Educator Award, which is given to only 50 public school music educators across the country.
“I could not have done any of this or sustained any of this without my mother,” he said. “Clarsteen Foster – in moments when I felt like going back to New York, she was like, ‘Those kids – it’s not about you.’”
