Educators Serving Their Country at Home and Abroad
December 19, 2011 by twalker
Filed under Featured News, Top Stories
Early on Sunday morning, the last U.S. troops in Iraq crossed the border into Kuwait, ending the Iraq War after almost nine years. Fulfilling a key promise to the American people, President Obama has brought an end to U.S. combat activities, withdrawn nearly 150,000 U.S. troops from Iraq and hundreds of bases have been shut down.
In his weekly address on Saturday, the President paid special tribute to the men and women who served:
This is an extraordinary achievement – one made possible by the hard work and sacrifice of the men and women who had the courage to serve. And there’s a lesson to learn from that – a lesson about our character as a nation.
See, there’s a reason our military is the most respected institution in America. They don’t see themselves or each other as Democrats first or Republicans first. They see themselves as Americans first.
For all our differences and disagreements, they remind us that we are all a part of something bigger; that we are one nation and one people. And for all our challenges, they remind us that there is nothing we can’t do when we stick together.
As U.S. forces return home, NEA Today takes this opportunity to look back at some of the NEA members who have served in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Educators-Soldiers Pick Up Their Lives (September 2007)
I was a seventh-grade Spanish teacher at a middle school in the Bronx, loving my new career and going out with my friends every weekend, when I was called up with my Army National Guard unit in the spring of 2004.
After a long deployment to Iraq, Staff Sgt. James Smith, a school bus driver with the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, returned home in 2004.
At first I was in denial. My contract with the military was expiring in just five months, and I did not think I was going to go off to combat.
I broke the news to my principal and in a matter of a couple of hours, the whole staff knew. Next on the list were my students. One girl started crying. She became distant after my announcement. I later got a letter from her saying she felt all the important male figures in her life were abandoning her. I felt like I had failed her.
My unit left for Iraq in October. We were involved in heavy fighting and my squad leader and another squad member were killed. I was slightly injured by a roadside bomb.
I came back in September 2005 and went to work the very next week. I wanted my life back, and I did not want my students to have substitute teachers for a month. But as soon as I came into the room, I felt the tension. The students did not know how to react.
A Teacher, No Matter Where (January 2007)
The students sitting in front of Virginia teacher Philip Forgit couldn’t read or write, so he did what any good educator would do: he found a way to help them. But this was no ordinary class. Forgit was in Iraq, and his students were members of that country’s fledgling military.
A U.S. Navy reservist called to active duty, Forgit was responsible for readying the soldiers for their new military duties. When he realized they couldn’t read or write their own language, he knew the first lesson would have to be literacy training. So in addition to his regular military duties as an advisor to the Iraqi army, he used local contacts to find an Iraqi teacher willing to take on the risk of working with the U.S. military. Forgit set up a one-room schoolhouse, complete with textbooks and posters. The students helped select the school’s name—the Mind and Rifle School—and its logo melding scholarship and military duty.
ESPs as Army Reservists in Iraq (April 2006)
“They had a whole lot of different ugly bugs with furry legs that would crawl inside your clothes and bite you all over,” says Staff Sgt. James Smith, a school bus driver with the Clark County School District in Las Vegas. “And it was hot—about 150 degrees inside the cab of my truck.”
Smith is one of hundreds of education support professionals (ESPs) who have traded their school wardrobes for sand-colored combat fatigues. As members of the Reserves and National Guard, ESPs from across the country are part of the largest military call-up in the last 30 years.
“When our country calls, ESPs respond,” says Karen Mahurin, president of the National Council of ESPs. “It’s hard for them, having to leave their families and jobs. But they don’t hesitate to defend America and everything we stand for.”
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