As one door closes, another opens

Rhonda Foster is all set to start her dream.
She’ll head to Chetopa in mid-August for her first-ever teaching job. She’ll teach language arts and creative writing to elementary and middle-school students.
“I’m excited, but kind of scared, too,” Foster admits. “I’ve never lived on my own before. Guess I gotta grow up sometime.”
Foster, it should be noted, is 54.
“It took me five years to find this job, and I’m 15 years from retirement,” she joked.
In a remarkable set of circumstances, Foster found herself facing unemployment — she is among the 80 or so Herff Jones workers notified the plant will close by Oct. 1 — to finding her dream job, in a span of 48 hours.
The Herff Jones closure was announced July 7. Foster picked up her phone the morning of July 9.
“I had the interview that afternoon, at 2:30,” she recalled. “They said they’d let me know by 6. At 6 o’clock, they called and offered me the job. It was that quick.”

AS A SINGLE mother, Foster deferred her career plans until her two daughters, Sarabeth and Sheila, were grown and out of school.
She held steady employment, primarily with a health insurance office in Fort Scott, “but I put all of my outside attention to my children,” she said.
As her daughters grew older, Foster began taking online classes.
That led to a momentous weekend in May 2010.
Granddaughter Bailey LaRue graduated from Teresa Cook’s preschool on a Thursday.
Daughter Sheila walked across the stage at Pittsburg State University on Friday.
And that Saturday, Foster earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Sterling College.
“That was a special year,” she said.
With her degree in hand, Foster started looking for a teaching job, but she admittedly limited her search.
“I did not want to move,” she said. “So I only applied at places within an hour’s drive.”
She worked briefly as a paraprofessional at Marmaton Valley, occasionally serving as a substitute teacher, before returning to the health insurance industry “for financial reasons.”
Foster was working for Cobalt Med Plans Health Insurance in Fort Scott late last year, when she began to seek employment elsewhere.
“I left a job, and I could have stayed,” she said, “but I got swept up in the fact they were calling for a bad winter. I wanted a job where I could drive to Iola instead of Fort Scott.”
Foster was hired last December at Herff Jones.
Unbeknownst to Foster, Herff Jones had been acquired weeks earlier by an investment group. Already rumors had been floating around her colleagues that the plant’s days were numbered.
“I was scared,” she admitted.
Had she known of the plant’s tenuous future, Foster would have stayed at Cobalt. And while she enjoyed working with her colleagues at Herff Jones, “it just wasn’t a good fit for me,” she said.
Then came the fateful two-day stretch a little more than a week ago.
“As it turned out, everything is going to be great,” she said. “I’m fortunate.”
Still, with the plant’s pending closure, and Herff Jones’ invitation for employees to continue working for the company in Indiana, it begs the question: Would she have moved to Indianapolis?
“No,” she said quickly. “Indianapolis was not an option. Going to Chetopa was a stretch.
“I’m real tight with my family,” she said. “I’m an only child. My parents are aging.”
Foster plans to stay in an apartment in Chetopa during the week, then return to stay with her parents, Howard and Beth Foster, during the weekends.
“And I’m still close enough I can come back during the week for Christmas programs,” she notes.
Her two grandchildren are students at Marmaton Valley Elementary School.

EDUCATION has been in the family’s blood, even if it trickled upward from her children.
Sheila Foster teaches family and consumer sciences at Royster Middle School in Chanute. Sarabeth LaRue works as a paraprofessional for the ANW Special Education Cooperative in Moran.
“The kids are on Pinterest, and they’re sending me all kinds of tips,” she said, “especially Sheila, since she teaches middle school as well.”
Foster has some more course work to complete as well.
She has a year to obtain her certification to teach secondary-level language arts.
“That’s where I’ve wanted to teach all along, at the high school level,” she said. “I’m going to get that secondary endorsement, then maybe work my way up.”
She admits the anxiety will grow until Aug. 24, the first day of school.
“My family’s excited,” she said. “They know I’m nervous. Right now, my house is a staging area, trying to get things lined out and ready to go. Fortunately, I have stuff the kids didn’t take with them, so I don’t need much. I can furnish the place. I have to get some pots and pans, but that’s about it.”

REGARDLESS of her anxiety level, Foster’s mood brightens at the thought of working with children, the impetus behind her teaching dream.
“I liked watching the kids get it,” she said. “When they struggle with something, and then they get it, it’s an awesome feeling.”