Joan Foley

Miss Foley was our class advisor. She was very kind and was very helpful to me. She was a lovely lady and a wonderful teacher. Ruth Ann Haas Class of 1958 Boyertown Area High School

One of only two teachers/professors throughout my many years of schooling that had a profound effect on me and my career. Miss Foley demanded quality work, and challenged her students to up their standards to meet her expectations. A true teacher!

Miss Foley helped me survive an abysmal family situation in my teen years in Boyertown, PA. She saw that I had some academic talent even though we embarrassed her dreadfully on a school newspaper trip to NYC, giggling so hard that we almost got kicked out of Carnegie Hall. She had grace, humor, intelligence and made learning fun. Her words to me in our high school yearbook were "to look at the stars for a chance." I did.

Joan was the Boyertown Class of 1958 class advisor. She was so great to work with and so much fun. It made our Senior Year such a wonderful experience. We were so lucky to have that time with her.

After reading through the tributes to a great teacher who touched and challenged so many lives, I am reminded of the saying, "It is better to be a good original than a bad copy." Miss Foley personified the phrase, but she was a "great" original!

My favorite teacher too. Chuck Grubb and I were in her first classes at Governor Mifflin and on that first day we didn't know what we were dealing with. She came on unltra-demanding, almost "witch"-like. However, it wasn't too long that we saw through that hard presentation and realized what a gifted and caring teacher she was. I wish I had known she was still in the Shillington Area all these years.

Miss Foley was my favorite teacher, way back in 1965. She coerced me (that would be signed me up despite my reluctance) into 'honors English' and made me work - a good thing for the sometime-slacker that I was. I recall she had the whole class for an outing at the Schuylkill CC my senior year, and many of us had an amusing reunion with her after moving on to college. She truly did care about her students, and I now wish I could have reconnected with her in more recent times.

Her class was both exhilarating and terrifying – from discovering the beauty of Shakespeare and Hardy to sweating through those Friday themes, praying the words would come before the bell rang. For many of us, Miss Foley was perhaps the first teacher to challenge us. (I mean, REALLY challenge us.) She set the bar so high and expected you to jump. But she was such a great teacher that you WANTED to jump as high as you could to earn her approval.

We admired her brilliance, her wit and...

About 20 years ago, I had the good fortune to meet Gertrude Sternbergh, the doyenne of Berks County arts, at “Sterling Castle”, the Sternbergh family's solemn, Victorian manor on Centre Avenue. Ms. Sternbergh's niece, Diana Schuyler, joined us for tea in the music room. “Miss Schuyler”, as I knew her when my teenage French teacher at Mifflin, was then teaching English at Reading High. Our meeting was prompted by my writing Ms. Sternbergh about her recollections of traveling on the...