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Educating military dependent students around the world is a challenging and rewarding endeavor. Since the days of Army frontier posts, U.S. military installations have established their own schools when no public education was available in the local area. Shortly after the end of World War II, the United States military established schools for the children of its service men and women stationed in Europe and the Pacific. Today, the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) serves approximately 90,000 students in grades K-12 of military service members and Department of Defense civilian employees in 208 schools located in 12 countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico.
Unique aspects of military life factor heavily in the approach to educating students of military families. Because military assignments often result in frequent moves, the transient rate for DoDEA schools is 35%. Approximately 48% of military service members or DoD civilian employees have a dependent child and nearly 63% of these children are of school-age. One of the major decisions for military families in accepting a new duty assignment is the quality of schools for their children. Military families consider their children’s education to be one of their primary life concerns and it has an impact on recruitment, readiness, retention and satisfaction with assignment.
Current military rebasing initiatives will relocate large numbers of military families in the coming years and will impact local education agencies (LEAs) that educate military children. Many of these students will move from DoDEA schools into America’s public, private and home-schooling environments. As military students are absorbed into communities, DoDEA can serve as a resource to share its best practices and programs from many years of experience educating children of the military.
With its many years of experience overseas and domestically, DoDEA has been nationally recognized for its achievements. This success is grounded in its focus on strategic planning, continuous improvement, and commitment to addressing the challenges of the mobile military student. A more rigorous high school curriculum has resulted in an increase in student achievement and addressed many graduation requirement concerns. Its expertise in advanced courses, foreign language instruction and a curriculum for national strategic languages, such as Chinese and Arabic, have much to offer to local education agencies.
While it is more than willing to share its expertise in these areas to help LEAs better serve military students and families, there are other aspects of DoDEA’s experience and knowledge that can provide even more critical support to this audience. The most logical place to begin is for teachers and administrators to gain a better understanding of the military culture. As mentioned previously, schools are a critical quality of life factor for service members and their families and the quality of education and teachers have a tremendous impact on recruitment and retention in the Armed Forces. During times of family separation and deployments, schools become the stability and focus of family life.
The second step in improving support for military students is to understand what military families have come to expect from the schools their children attend. Welcoming communities, teachers and peers (students), transition support, regular communication, responsiveness to concerns, and respect for military culture are crucial. Understanding and support when the military mission affects family life and a clear organizational structure, or “chain of command” are also important school attributes.
Creating caring, supportive environments in schools is big step towards supporting military families and students. Heidelberg Middle School in Germany focuses on reducing the pupil load for teachers by adding more teachers to the academic courses and creating smaller teams; assigning teachers to rooms by grades; and assuring blocks of time with flexible block scheduling to create interdisciplinary courses for students. Dr. Ellen Minette, Heidelberg Middle School principal and recipient of the 2006 National Association of Secondary Schools Principal of the Year Award for Middle Schools cites the success of this approach.
“When learning is the central focus of the school, academic achievement is linked to the caring relationship between students and teachers,” she said. “Our success in raising Terra Nova scores for all students, reducing discipline referrals and our continued popularity with students and teachers is a result of teachers knowing their students better and supporting them as they attempt more rigorous work.”
Teachers and administrators should also be aware of the strengths military families bring to the school environment. In addition to the economic impact the military has on a community, military families and students bring diversity, a strong focus on and respect for education, involved parents, and a global perspective.
School administrators can best position themselves for success in supporting military families and students by establishing a relationship with command officials – the installation commander, the senior enlisted advisor and the school liaison officer. It is important to get to know the installation’s family support or assistance director, the public affairs officer and members of the community outreach or partnership organizations. Invite military leaders to participate in school and community activities. Military members are always willing to volunteer in school programs and projects.
It is critical for administrators to ask military leaders about how to best communicate between school and command officials. Get the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of key military leaders and be sure to provide the same list for schools to military officials. Transition support resources are plentiful on military installations and administrators need to develop ways to incorporate the school system into these services. Administrators can also arrange for training for teachers and school support personnel to make them aware of deployment topics and plans that may affect parents of their students. Obtaining crisis contacts, opportunities for partnership, and installation resources that can support schools should also be on an administrator’s agenda.
Heidelberg Middle School has implemented an aggressive personalization program that responds to the needs of its students. Dr. Minette and her staff have developed a variety of ways to help students cope with deployments. Parents of students in her school have been working continuously to support the War on Terror and are deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Deployments of our parent soldiers have spawned deployment counseling groups where students air their concerns of the absentee parent. Advisory groups have maps of Iraq and Afghanistan on their walls; students and teachers focus on Middle East history and culture,” she said. “We bring in speakers to explain to the students what a deployment is and soldiers back from the region are guest speakers in the classrooms.” Minette added that these events connect the school and the community and personalize a school for students.
Teachers and administrators can benefit from what DoDEA has learned about communicating with military families. First of all, it’s not that difficult. Every active duty service member has an e-mail account – even when they deploy. Parents are computer savvy and are very familiar with getting information from the web. They will research your school system long before they arrive, so first impressions of your school are made well in advance of their children entering the classroom. Personal contact is important and it makes a difference to military families. They will want to know about problems and concerns early on – especially with regard to transition and performance. They expect feedback on their child’s progress and they will be more than willing to work with you in any area of concern.
The next several years will be crucial for LEAs and DoDEA as the number of students from military families who will attend schools in communities around military installations increases. While the initiatives mentioned above are by no means exhaustive or comprehensive, they offer a positive start on the road to enhancing and supporting the school experience for military students and their families.
