Classroom Connection: Military Deployments

You and your students will go through the ups and downs of many different life experiences during each school year. Navigating these ever-changing challenges can be difficult. If you can deal with new experiences in your classroom in a positive way by using them as teachable moments for your entire class, you will help your students develop empathy towards others. As a member of a military family and a teacher, I have experienced the effects of military deployment both personally and in the classroom.

This week on the Gateway, we are focusing on resources and techniques that can help teachers best deal with military deployments and the many effects they can have on the students (and classrooms) involved. The resources and ideas here and in Joann’s companion column (linked below) should help you turn the stress and anxiety of deployment into a quality learning experience for your class.

My research for this column showed me that there is good information about deployment for teachers, but it is scattered all around the Internet. Joann worked to catalog activities and lessons on the Gateway so it will be easier for you to search and find. I am also including links to external sites that may be useful as you support your students during a deployment. We will continue to add more military related resources to the Gateway as we discover them and as you, our readers suggest them.

The terminology and details of deployment may not be familiar to you if you don’t have personal experience with the military. A military deployment is when a military member is sent on a mission away from home, in support of a military operation. These deployments can last anywhere from a few weeks to over a year. Some military members are deployed more often than others, depending on the current needs of the military and their job. The family may know about and prepare for a deployment for a long time, or it can happen with very short notice. A deployed parent may have limited communication with their family at home and with you, the teacher. For a more detailed description of what to expect, please read this Educator’s Guidebook to the Military Child During Deployment from Ed.gov.

During a parent’s deployment, each student may handle the stress of the separation differently. The student’s age, relationship to the deploying parent, experience with previous deployments, and temperament all play a role in how that student will handle the situation. Regardless of where a parent is going, how long they will be gone, or how dangerous the particular deployed location may be, a parent leaving and going to an unknown scary place is stressful for the family members left behind. You can be a source of strength during this time as the teacher, and you can prepare by having the best resources available.

The differences between your military connected students and civilian students have been well documented and studied. There are plenty of articles on the subject, but I thought these modules from Building Resilient Kids would be especially helpful and quick tools to help teachers understand the strengths and challenges of their military connected students. These modules were created as part of a course for educators of military children. A podcast from the Military Child Education Coalition, titled “Do military-connected youth behave differently?” also makes some good points for educators, and is worth a listen. If you go to the Military Kids Connect site, you will find all kinds of neat tools. If you click on the teacher section, you will find some other interesting discussion of military kids behavior.

How can a teacher figure out what to do to help these military connected students during the stressful, life-changing times during a deployment? You may notice stress and behavioral changes before, during, and after the deployment. These changes are described in the modules and guidebook linked above. Be sure to stay in contact with the parent or guardian at home so you can make a plan of action together if the need arises. This guide from Military OneSource has a lot of good information collected especially for teachers of students with a deploying parent. (This is a PDF file to download.)

If you have questions about how to help your students or if you need additional support, be sure to contact the School Liason Officer at your nearest base. Their job is to help schools and teachers best serve the military population, and they keep track of the best resources in the area. Look at the following site for a comprehensive list of current Student Liason Officers for each base, separated by the branch of the military. You can also call your local base and ask for the Family Readiness Canter. These centers should know where to send you to get the information you need. If a student is having a very hard time with the deployment, be sure to talk to the parent about contacting a Military Family Life Consultant on base. They are social workers and psychologists who can provide free, short-term help for your students without keeping records. This type of undocumented, brief help is just what many students need to get back on track.

You have done your best to take care of your student’s emotions, but what else can you do? Studying the locations, customs, and issues surrounding the deployed location of the student’s parent can help the class find a connection to the area. When you find out you have a student with a parent deploying, you may or may not be able to find out where that parent will be going. If you have a general idea of their deployed location, studying the area can be an excellent way for your whole class to learn from the deployment. With the current conflicts, it would be a pretty safe assumption that the deployment will be supporting a mission somewhere in the Middle East. Keeping in mind that you don’t want to bring up too much discussion of conflict that might be scary for students with parents in the region, you have lots of opportunities to use the deployment as a teaching opportunity. This can include geography lessons, math lessons (such as distances between here and the deployed location, time differences, etc.), civics lessons, and social studies lessons.

As you begin to teach about the deployed location, be sure to search the Gateway for free lessons and activities on the topic. Since a large majority of service members are currently deploying to Afghanistan, I selected a few Gateway resources for this area as an example. USA Today created a good resource for high school students to help study the country from a news perspective. The resource, Rebuilding a Nation: Afghanistan can be modified for younger grades as well. You might also like Lesson Tutor’s Spotlight on Afghanistan, which is full of discussion starters to get students really thinking about what Afghanistan is like. This resource was written for 6th grade, but can also be used for many different levels.

It can be hard to help younger students to connect with Afghanistan or other countries that seem so different from ours. Scholastic has a really neat tool called Global Trek, a travel simulation that lets students pick their destination and go on an online journey to learn more about that destination. Global Trek encourages students to keep a travel journal of their trip, and gives students lots of interesting facts, pictures, and links about the country they choose. Another similar resource is part of the Military Kids Connect site. This Where Are You Going world map allows students to focus on a country of interest, and learn things about the culture through short, fun videos. One article I read suggested asking the deployed parent to send small trinkets from the region to each student in the class. It could be something as simple as coins, shells, or pictures. I like how this idea can help make the deployed location seem more real to students who can only see the country on a map or in pictures. Some deployed parents might even choose to become pen pals with the class.

Military deployments are wrought with stress, anger, loneliness, and much more for all of the people involved. These emotions might find their way into your classroom, and learning about them as a class can help develop empathy in your students. You may choose to study these emotions through books, activities, or role-play. You can find a good list of books about the stress of deployment here. Many of these books lend themselves well to corresponding activities. A good example of this is The Wishing Tree. If you are looking for more direct ways to study stress with your students, read this booklet about dealing with stress related to deployments. Joann also suggested some Gateway resources in her archived column, All Stressed Out. If you are looking for something different, you can perform a Gateway search to find a lesson or activity to meet your needs. I narrowed down the following search to include health resources about stress.

When a time comes that you need to deal with a military deployment, I hope this post will be helpful to you. It will be archived on the site for you to use when you need it. I also hope you make The Gateway to 21st Century Skills a regular part of your lesson planning. Whether you are a teacher or a military parent, the Gateway has thousands of standards-aligned resources for you to help keep your students up to speed in all subjects. Please leave a comment to let us know what other topics you want to read about in the Gateway columns. If you know of any other military-related resources you find useful, please let us know about those as well. You can get daily updates and discussions of Gateway resources by following us on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll see you there!