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Schools for military children respect their unique lives

Oct- 7-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT , 4/2 SBCT , Ft. Lewis , Homefront

By Mike Barber, Seattle P-I

FORT LEWIS -- In "Mr. T's" kindergarten class at Evergreen Elementary, 5-year-old Annika and her classmates are scribbling lines in their journals. The assignment is a daily question, and today's seeks a few thoughts about their favorite "math stations" exercise.

Annika, however, is more focused than most upon filling her page.

When her teacher, Jeff Thompson, reaches Annika and asks her to translate what she has busily used her pencil to create, Annika tells him about her favorite math station.

Then she reads for him about a more significant part of her life:

"My daddy, I'm missing him so much because he's in Iraq," she says, running her finger over penciled lines as she interprets them for her teacher.

Thompson and other teachers at Evergreen often see and hear such sentiments from their students. Evergreen, part of Clover Park School District, is on post and comprises mostly children from Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base.

"These kids have a lot on their minds," Thompson said.

"I try to make sure they are excited to get into the classroom for a few hours and not worry about what's going on in the world, to give them as much normalcy as possible. What is so important about what we do here is we are a stable 'someone' they can count on."

The school is representative of the unique challenges and rewards experienced by military families and school districts serving bases around the world.

In the Puget Sound region alone, "we have 32,000 children of active-duty soldiers and 20,000 of reservists and National Guard," said Norma Melo, Fort Lewis's school-liaison officer.

At Evergreen, most students have or have had a parent -- typically a father -- deployed for at least a year in Iraq or Afghanistan, said Karen Reynolds, a guidance counselor.

Evergreen expects a 60 percent turnover by January when soldiers in the newly returned 3rd Stryker Brigade begin to transfer elsewhere. The school also contains a significant portion of special-needs students from military families, and is teamed with nearby Madigan Army Medical Center, Reynolds said. The medical center earned top honors for 2007 from the National Child Education Coalition for teaming with Clover Park School District to help children develop resiliency skills to cope with deployments.

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