Online NewsHour: People from the Military Becoming Teachers -- April 28, 1997

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

APRIL 28, 1997
TRANSCRIPT

Many retired military personnel are becoming teachers. Tom Bearden reports.
JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight the military approach to classroom teaching, a second career option many retired military personnel are exercising these days. Tom Bearden reports from Norfolk, Virginia.
TOM BEARDEN: Master Sergeant James Down is still doing push-ups after 20 years in the Marine Corps, even though he's just a few months shy of retiring.
MASTER SGT. JAMES DOWN, U.S. Marine Corps: And one, two, three! One--
TOM BEARDEN: Down is training this unit of younger Marines to go into administrative work in the corps, jobs more behind desks than in a war zone. But he, nevertheless, has to make sure they stay in shape to meet the Marines' fitness standards. Down often spends a large part of his day in front of a blackboard, here reviewing a final exam that students must pass in order to be promoted. But at night the master sergeant becomes the student. Down is studying for a master's degree in education from Old Dominion University in Virginia, preparing to launch a second career as an elementary schoolteacher. It's an opportunity Sgt. Down says he would never have believed possible 20 years ago.
MASTER SGT. JAMES DOWN: A high school dropout tenth grade, didn't have anything going for me. I barely completed the 10th grade. So, now. I would have never suspected that this would happen. Throughout my years in the Marine Corps I learned the value of an education, and I started going to college. I earned my four-year degree, and now with Old Dominion's program I'll have my master of science in education. And I want to--I think I want to give back because I don't want to see kids go through kind of the same things that I went through. And I feel that the experience that I've learned in the Marine Corps traveling around, I've just gained so much knowledge the time that I've been in, plus the schooling that I've gone to, that I think that I can really make a difference for some kid somewhere. TOM BEARDEN: Down is enrolled in Old Dominion's Military Career Transition Program, which allows him to take classes at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia while he finishes up his military career. The program began in 1988 just as the Pentagon started is long, post Cold War drawdown. It was launched partly because of a national survey which revealed that a surprisingly large number of military personnel were interested in teaching after retirement. Program Director Robert MacDonald thinks the program's popularity stems from the fact that the military is itself a gigantic teaching machine.
ROBERT MacDONALD, Military Transition Program, Old Dominion University: When a young man or young woman enters the military they go through basic training. Then they go through advanced training. And all through their military career they're either going to school, or they're training. Many of the skills that they learn in the military have a direct correlation to what we want for the best practices in teacher education, and specifically I mean team planning, group work, collaboration, a sense of mission, a sense of purpose, and self-critical.
TOM BEARDEN: Old Dominion is located in Norfolk, Virginia, and MacDonald realized that being located near the world's largest naval base meant a big pool of potential teachers could be tapped. Most participants in the program received tuition assistance either from the military or the federal government. More than 800 officers and non-commissioned officers have graduated since the program began and are teaching in 39 states around the country. This is Navy Pilot Tom Procilo six years ago getting into the cockpit of an F-14, a high-tech fighter he flew on various deployments around the world. Procilo spent 14 years flying for the Navy and could have earned a hefty salary in commercial aviation after leaving the service.
TOM PROCILO, Mathematics Teacher: (talking to class) Gentlemen, quiet down. Okay. You guys had a couple of easy days. We need to get some work done.
TOM BEARDEN: Instead, he's teaching math at the Center for Effective Learning in Virginia Beach, an alternative school for kids who have been suspended or expelled from other schools. Some have even spent time in jail.
TOM BEARDEN: It's a long way from the deck of an aircraft carrier to hear.
TOM PROCILO: Yes, it is, a very, very long way.
TOM BEARDEN: How does it compare?
TOM PROCILO: In some respects it's the same. In other respects it's completely opposite. For the most part the same part is the stress, even though flying an aircraft onto a carrier is a stressful, it's just as stressful once that door closes and I'm in a class with ten to twelve kids. These kids are all demanding. They all want something of us immediately. They do not know patience. They do not know how to wait. So I'm usually catering to two or three of them at the same time, if not all ten or twelve of them. So there the stress level does get quite high. In fact, at times it's been higher than when I was flying and being shot at.
TOM PROCILO: (talking to student) Leonard, you're kind of heading towards another good day today. It'd just be my guess, but I think you're heading towards another good day.
TOM BEARDEN: The majority of Old Dominion graduates are men, and Procilo thinks having a male teacher is advantageous for children, especially in a school like his. Unlike the military his students will not automatically do what they're told. Just getting them to show up and sit quietly in their chairs can be a major accomplishment. He says that's where his military training helps.
TOM PROCILO: What I bring in here mostly is my discipline that I've learned in the military, and these children here in an alternative setting require discipline. They require discipline strongly, something that they miss of their home life. A lot of them are children from single parent families where the single parent is quite busy with their job or raising the family, itself. So they're not seeing a lot of discipline in their home, which gets them into trouble in a regular school, which then gets them sent here to an alternative school, which is where we take over. I have built up a fairly good relationship with several of my students. And it's quite rewarding for me personally to get in with them to the point where I feel as though I can change their lives.
MAJOR CAROL HENRY: The Army and the Navy would have to rotate as commanders, and it was going to start--it was a three-star position--
TOM BEARDEN: This was Major Carol Henry when she was in the Air Force, here describing to officers at the Airlift Operations School how the different services function at military airports.
CAROL HENRY, Teacher: (teaching class) I think you'd better concentrate. You're going to have the girls beat you again.
TOM BEARDEN: Like Porcillo she's now in her first year of teaching. She also works with children who have serious academic or social problems. But she says her military background alone isn't enough to make a difference.
CAROL HENRY: They joke with me about my military bearing because I showed it in my classroom. You know, I don't let them cut up in class and I ease up every once in a while but most of the time they know where I stand, and some of them will say, I knew you were in the military because you act like this is--we're in the military. This is like boot camp. I said, well, because I'm expecting you to do what's expected of you in the classroom, yes, but for military people to come in and think that just because they've been in the military and it's going to impress these students, it doesn't happen; they can care less.
TOM BEARDEN: Henry's principal, John Diggs, thinks her background and approach has helped some but not all of her students.
TOM BEARDEN: How have the kids reacted to her?
JOHN DIGGS, Principal: I think initially when they came in it was sort of a different approach that they were unaccustomed to, someone who came in and said this is what we're going to do, and we're going to begin doing it today, and we're not waiting a moment more. That approach was something that I think it sort of a little uncharacteristic for new teachers that come into the teaching profession.
TOM BEARDEN: Is there anything about the military approach that they respond to that's better, the same now, or worse than any other approaches?
JOHN DIGGS: Not any worse. I think we'll find out that some of the children that we have had had some difficulties, the one thing that they all want is they want to know what the boundaries are. And in her classroom the boundaries are very easily seen. They know how far they can go or not go, and so once they start edging up to that line that they can't cross, Ms. Henry quickly brings them back into where they should be.
TOM BEARDEN: So why do people like Marine Corporal Annissa Delk, who have highly salable skills--she's a flight controller--want to teach school for relatively low salaries? Service people who retire after 20 years in the military receive pensions and medical benefits which obviously help, but Delk only did a four-year tour of duty.
TOM BEARDEN: You're not doing this for the money?
CORPORAL ANNISSA DELK, U.S. Marine Corps: Obviously not. Teachers' salaries are not very competitive in the professional world, which is quite surprising, especially with a need and the vacancies that are available. You would think that there would be vast resources, but as a whole, teachers don't make very much money, so you're definitely not in it for the money. You're definitely in it for something--a lot more--something that's not material.
TOM BEARDEN: And that could be just what the teaching profession needs at a time of severe teacher shortages and declining test scores. (Military Training Session)
TOM BEARDEN: The military may prove to be an unexpected but valuable resource for American public schools.

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