It takes ten months to get to graduate from the resident program of the US Army War College. Soldiers travel from all over the United States in order to complete the program, which usually means that they also have to move their families into the Carlisle Barracks community.
In these families are a great number of individuals who are described as “resilient” by Liz Knouse, the Family, Morale, Welfare and Recreation Director. Knouse has a child of her own and also has experience of relocation with her husband, who is in active service, giving her firsthand experience of the challenges faced by children who are continually on the move. Knouse says that the children become very resilient as a result of the constant moving. “I think that having to move so many times makes you that way,” Knouse notes. “You have to be a self-starter to some degree.”
Vice-President Jill Biden and First Lady Michelle Obama, who just recently started a new initiative aimed at colleges offering teaching degrees, are now supporting this resilience. Over 100 colleges have joined in with the project, which is known as Operation: Educate the Educator, in order to better prepare teachers in the future for “the social, emotional and academic needs of children in military families”.
Colleges that enroll in the program incorporate into their curriculum information about military children, and also require that student teachers work with military children during their field experience.
Rick Wozniak
