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Kim Foster, Kirkwood High School

Intro to Art, Graphic Design I & II, Drawing

Kim Foster knows that the devil isn’t in the details—he’s in the television set. Four years ago, when Foster realized that the tube was sapping time from her own painting and pottery, she switched it off forever, without a qualm. Now she teaches her students what this episode taught her: “You have to give up something less important to get what’s more important”—a maxim the devil would almost certainly rather they didn’t know.

It’s Foster’s attention to such little things, she says, that won her a 2006 Missouri Art Education Association Art Teacher of the Year award.

“All art teachers do extras. They’re hanging student work in the hallways, encouraging students one on one, going to shows,” Foster says. She just turns the extras up a notch: hanging student work in the Missouri Capitol rotunda, encouraging students to win $500 prizes in design contests, going to statewide craft fairs and national teacher conferences.

So many extras could prove distracting, but after 16 years of concentration, Foster makes them serve her students’ growth in creativity and expertise. Her life answers one of the questions she wants her students to ask: What real-life situations can art address?

Enamored of the practical and concrete, Foster wants her students to think like artists even if they never pick up a brush again after her class. Whether they design national advertising campaigns or just pick colors for their living rooms, she wants them to say, “‘I can fix that’ or ‘There’s more than one way of doing this.’ I want them to look at life in an integrated way, solve problems, get ideas across, communicate, make things beautiful”—and, when necessary, turn off the TV.