Anderson Heights student, teacher heading to D.C.

Photo by Paul Robeson, Reporter

WASHINGTON BOUND: Fifth grade student Cody Foster, left, and teacher Heather Morphew discuss details of their upcoming trip to Washington, D.C.

Cody Foster is heading to Washington, D.C. The 10-year-old Anderson Heights Elementary School fifth-grader was recently selected to participate in the People to People Student Leader Program.

Heather Morphew, her teacher while in the forth grade, nominated the youngster for the program. Foster’s teacher this year, Beverly Belk, also signed the application as two recommendations are required for consideration.

Foster and Morphew will be flying to Washington, D.C., for the week of Mar. 24-30. Foster will be able to visit the U.S. Capitol, the Smithsonian Institution, colonial Williamsburg and the National Museum of American History. She will experience how leaders develop strategies and make decisions.

Morphew said the trip is “a great opportunity to see where the history of the country began.” She added that Cody is a “hard worker and deserves the trip.”The trip will be Foster’s “first time on an airplane and it is the only thing, besides her horses, that she is concerned about,” said her great-grandfather James Jewett, who along with his wife LaDoma is helping to finance the trip. The Jewetts, working alongside Cody’s father, Keith Foster, have helped with child rearing duties “since she was three-days-old,” said Jewett.

“Cody loves horses,” Jewett said, “and has won many awards for riding in the Red Bluff and Cottonwood parades.”

Jewett is paying for Morphew to accompany his great-granddaughter on the trip.

Young Foster, a member of Happy Valley 4-H, said she would like to pursue a career in veterinary medicine.

The People to People Student Leader Program dates back to 1956 when Dwight D. Eisenhower, the nation’s 34th president, , started the People to People initiative.

Eisenhower believed that “ordinary citizens of different nations, if able to communicate directly, would solve their differences and find a way to live in peace,” according to the organization’s Web site.

The People to People Student Leader Program has enabled nearly 18,000 of America’s best and brightest middle school, junior high and high school students to learn important leadership skills needed in a global society, the Web site states.

For more information, People to People’s site is at: www.wlfleaders.org.