Military Kids Essays - Education, Harnett County Schools

Support Our Troops, And Their Children: Aiding Military Dependent Students in School Transition ?What am I doing? Why am I failing? Won?t anyone help me(Wheeler) Millions of military students ask these very same questions every time they change a new school. According to a Fox News article written by Dr. Mary Keller, military-connected children move an average of seven times during their elementary through high school years. Moving to a new school just once can be tough, but having to re-adjust so many times can really hinder a child?s success. Every school system is different, with each one requiring something else that another does not, and vice versa. When a child constantly finds themselves changing school system, being required to do something entirely different than the previous school; grades can fall sharply, especially during high school. Several schools around the nation have begun to develop groups to aid military dependents in social, academic, and logistic aspects of transition to a new school. As this area is heavily military centered, having 48,306 active duty st udents in the state during June of 2008(CSG), Overhills High School, and surrounding schools should begin a New Students? Support Club to provide assistance to the many students in this situation. Moving to a new area is a tough thing for a child. They leave behind much of what they?ve become accustomed to such as, friends, activities, even family, and have to re-adjust to a whole new environment. School is especially tough. New students are viewed without a name by their classmates, known simply as ?The New Kid?. The method of how the school works can be completely different from the previous, causing you to change your work process entirely. In many high school cases, new students find themselves re-taking previous classes or suddenly needing to stay an extra semester or more due to requirements the new school system has that the previous school system did not require. Just one move is troublesome; imagine doing this same thing seven times over. Approximately 617,059(CSG) military dependent children currently face this challenge, and the number continues to rise. In late 2011 Fort Bragg will experience a large influx of military servicemen due to the U.S Army Reserve and U.S Army Forces Commands proposed transfer to Ft. Bragg. This also means a large influx of military dependent students into the surrounding school systems. Who will be there to help so many children in adjusting to the new community and school? Who will help these children in becoming accustomed to the school systems? I myself am new to the North Carolina School system, having moved from Florida a month before my senior year began. My father is E4 United States Air Force. The sudden move to such a different place was extremely difficult for me. I constantly found myself running around in a hectic mess trying to figure out what to do at school. Nearly every aspect of school is different. Even the grading scale is not the same as Florida?s, and I wasn?t told that until I discovered a grade of 82 was noted as a ?C? on a progress report. Also, I did not have a single clue as to what people enjoyed doing for fun in the surrounding community, or what the surrounding community was like for that matter. A new students? group could easily get students like myself together and inform us of important basics of the school system and speak of some social aspects of the surrounding area. Several other students are in the very same position. I sent out a survey to twenty-five first year students at Overhills High School, all of which are active military dependents. Of all the twenty-five students that participated in the survey, not a single one replied with a satisfactory report of the transition experience. Twelve of the students reported a dramatic decrease in grades and 10 reported a slight drop. I asked the students to relay any comments at the end of the survey, and several interesting statements were told. The most interesting was from a senior who had just transferred from Texas. This student said, ?This is my 3rd high school so far, and so far this is the only one with