Joining Forces: Operation Educate the Educators event

i recently had the privilege to attend a Joining Forcesevent at George Mason University. "Operation Educate the Educators" is an initiative to strengthen the preparation of educators to meet the needs of military children and during this event, we celebrated  the milestone of over 100 colleges and universities signing on to this initiative.

Major activities Operation Educate the Educators Initiative plans to take on include: 

-Incorporating curriculum and or clinical experiences in their teacher preparation programs that address the needs of military-connected children.

-Developing a set of competencies that schools of education can adopt to ensure their candidates understand the unique social and academic needs of military connected children

-Developing a web portal to provide resources to schools, colleges and departments of education on military culture, the social, emotional an academic needs of military connected children, and best practices in preparing teachers to meet these needs.

Having grown up as a military child I couldn't be happier to see this initiative get off the ground. it was so encouraging to hear representatives from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and the Military Child Education Coalition  {MCEC} talk about their goals and passion to educate our current educators and train our soon to be educators about the needs of military connected children. I can remember how things like deployment and Navy related issues affected me in high school. I was blessed to have a guidance counselor who understood military life, as well as many teachers.

Hands down the best part of yesterdays event was hearing 7th grade "army brat" Felicity speak about being a military child. She was the definition of a resilient military child. She made jokes about why we are dubbed "brats" when we are usually well mannered military kids. She had the crowd laughing about how her family has lived in 4 states over the last 7 years and some how managed to be a Red Sox and Yankees fan. She told a story of how her third grade teacher was such a blessing to her. Asking her and her twin sister how her dad was doing while deployed. She was grateful to have her teacher aware of this, and allowing her to discuss how she was feeling.

Hearing Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden speak about her passion for military families and children was something I will remember forever. You can just see the passion she has for our military families. It is so evident this is her passion.  There was nothing political about this cause, it was all about the 2 million military connected students. It was such a powerful hour to hear Dr. Biden and others beam with excitement about how the initiative "aims to he make our future educators better prepared to make a difference in the life of a military child". 

Jenelle M. Hatzung | Norfolk Chapter Director

www.bluestarfam.org

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