Foster Dickson is a writer, editor, and teacher in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of Closed Ranks and I Just Make People Up, and the editor of Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore.

Foster Dickson is an award-winning teacher who led the creative writing program at an arts magnet high school from 2003 until 2022 and regularly engaged his students in experiential learning projects involving community partnerships or events. His other experience during 2000s and 2010s included working with other high school students in community settings, middle-grade youth in a summer camp, elementary children in Sunday school, incarcerated men, and college undergraduates. In 2022, Foster accepted a position at a small liberal arts college and is now an instructor, writing specialist, and academic advisor serving undergraduates. At both institutions, he has been the faculty advisor for their student literary magazines.

Outside of the classroom, Foster coordinated educational outreach efforts for the Alabama Book Festival from 2009 through 2015; he attended the Alabama Education Association’s leadership training in 2013; and in 2019, went out to Missoula, Montana for Arizona State University’s National Sustainability Teachers’ Academy. Today, related to his roles at the college, he is an NASPA Certified Peer Education trainer.

In addition to working directly with students in classes and on campuses, Foster has also written curriculum for various projects and institutions. In 2005, he created the curricular resources for the Montgomery Children’s Walk, an event that involved an estimated 7,000 students in Montgomery, Alabama’s schools in commemorating Rosa Parks’ historic arrest. In 2009, Foster acted as the general editor for Treasuring Alabama’s Black Belt. He also created the lesson plans for The Freedom Rides Museum’s traveling exhibit on Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. in 2014, and later wrote the curriculum guide for Emily Blejwas’s 2019 book Alabama in Fourteen Foods.

Selected posts about teaching and education:

A Legitimate Educational Interest
“So even I have to admit that the proponents of including religious material in a public school education, like the ones in Louisiana and Oklahoma currently, have a point. There really is a Judeo-Christian basis to our literature, our history, and our culture.”

The End of an Era: Leaving BTW Magnet
“The unfortunate fact is: even good things must come to an end.”

Farm School Lessons and My Stubborn Optimism
“One of my goals with this sustainability effort at my school is demonstrating how the inconvenience of ‘going green’ – small-scale gardening and urban farming included – is not as great as some people might assume.”

When my school burned . . .
“I know that the faculty, staff, administrators, students, parents, alumni, and community supporters from Booker T. Washington Magnet High School have the desire and the fortitude to make this work, and what I saw yesterday is that we will have lots of help from near and far. ”

Field Trips to Nowhere
“What I hope the students will see – and I believe that they do – is that economic poverty is in no way coequal with spiritual poverty.” 

The Three-Legged Stool
“For the paradigm of education to succeed, all three – teacher, student, and parent – must be in place. Teachers must provide instruction, assignments, opportunities, and tutoring. Students must receive instruction and do their assigned work. Finally, parents and guardians are there to ensure that their children study, do their homework, and get adequate rest.”

Teach.
“Seldom in my adult life have I been in the presence of someone whose suffering and whose humility about that suffering have combined to such great effect.”

What Foxfire could have been— and still could be
“No amount of dollars, nor any computer-based program will ever accomplish what human beings working together can accomplish. About the value of community-centered experiential learning, I’ve told my own students’ parents many times, ‘They may not remember my lectures the next week, but they’ll remember every field trip we ever take.'”

You can also read Foster’s essay, “Writing is Activism,” included in NPR’s This I Believe project in 2007.