Student of the Week: Cahokia senior helps out at home, in school and in the community

William Foster speaks softly and wears a gold bow tie.

The 17-year-old Cahokia High School senior is more than just a smart guy who is the president of the National Honor Society and carries a 4.61 grade-point average.

“He’s an amazing kid. He’s got a huge heart,” said Assistant Principal Kristi Schroeder. “He’s well-respected and respectful. And he really wants to be a good role model for his siblings.”

On the day he was to be photographed as Student of the Week for the News-Democrat, William wore his “Honor Society bow tie.” (The national scholastic club’s colors are blue and gold.) Schroeder said he wears it every time he helps with the recycling effort at school, hauling boxes of paper out to a bin behind the school.

When asked to describe himself, William took a long pause.

“Ambitious. Reliable. Helpful.”

Schroeder nodded and smiled. He is all of those things and more, she said.

William’s mom, Cappalenia Foster, is a postal worker. He has two sisters, Criseona, 15, and Quanyae, 3, and a 10-year-old brother, Christopher.

“Living in a single-parent home without a strong male presence is a major challenge,” he wrote in a personal essay. “As the eldest child and as the man of the house, I was forced to grow up at an exponential rate.”

He’s up at 6 a.m. to get Quanyae ready for daycare. He drives Criseona to school and picks her up from after-school activities. He chauffeurs Christopher to football practice. All in a 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan.

He finds time to help outside his family, too. William is president of Interact, a Rotary-sponsored service club for teens. He has been involved in food and clothing drives and, most recently, he volunteered at Stop Hunger Now in Fairview Heights, where he helped assemble food kits that will be sent to Third World countries.

He is a member of Upward Bound, a college-preparatory program for high schoolers who are from low-income families or are potential first-generation college students.

He jokes about being good at English, his favorite subject: “I get asked to correct people’s papers.”

He’s second-best at math. “It challenges me.”

During a five-day Black History Tour this year with other students, William visited several historically black colleges and universities in the South. He wants to experience school away from home and likes the 2,800 student population at South Carolina State in Orangeburg, S.C.

“I want a school with a small class size,” he said. “I want to study psychology and then law. I like to know why people make the decisions that they do.” He is in the midst of filling out scholarship forms.

Nicole Webb, English department chair and National Honor Society sponsor, wrote that someone like William comes along only once in a while.

“We have a lot of great students, but William is the full package. He is compassionate, mature, intelligent, diligent, polite and humble,” she said. “He behaves as every parent wants their child to behave. He has achieved so much through his own ambitions. William can do whatever he sets out to do.”

Asked what advice he would give his siblings, he didn’t hesitate: “You have to do good in school. I’d tell them it’s not easy. That it’s a lot of work. It’s a long road. You have to stay on the road. But it will be worth it.”

This story was originally published December 1, 2015 at 10:12 AM with the headline "Student of the Week: Cahokia senior helps out at home, in school and in the community."