Some up in arms over National Guard's class time
marcus hathcock / sandy post
National Guard personnel teach Sandy High School students team-building activities while propagating an anti-drug message. Some parents don't like the fact that the Guardsmen are in full uniform, but personnel argue that firefighters or police officers would do the same.
A group of Sandy High School freshmen faced a daunting challenge: get everybody over an “electric fence,” and only three students could touch it.
That scenario forced the teens to embrace teamwork and think critically to get the job done.
Luckily, the electric fence wasn’t real — it was a tarp — but the true-to-life lessons taught in the series of exercises put on by the Oregon National Guard last month were.
While some may have seen the exercises as a useful tool for the new generation of Pioneers, the presence of a National Guard soldier in full uniform rattled parent Julie Slavick.
“I started calling some parents and asked them if they knew anything about it,” said Slavick. “I talked to 12 people and nobody knew what was going on. Some of them had been out of class for two days, others for four days. Every parent I spoke with thought it was a little strange.”
Slavick took her complaint to school administrators and they excused her son, Victor, from participating in the exercises. Instead, Victor spent the time in the school library working on his homework, which suited him fine.
“I got all my homework done while other people were just doing the activities,” said Victor.
While Victor studied, his classmates worked together on a variety of activities, including moving a group of people through a series of hoops, building a PVC pipe tower without being able to speak and a modified ropes course.
“You have to think not just about what you see, but in deeper ways to actually get the answer,” said freshman Chase Fredrickson, 14, of Sandy. “Basically, think beyond what you see.”
“The major skill it helped me increase was social skills,” said freshman Cory Hanson, 14, of Sandy. “I didn’t know anyone there except my friends and that just helped me get a whole bunch of (new) friends.”
“It’s a way of saying that high school will be fun,” said freshman Brittney Huntington, 14, of Sandy. “And then all the work begins, I guess.”
Freshman Focus
District officials have brought in the National Guard for each of the past three years as part of the Freshman Focus class. The exercises are done at the beginning of each school year — this year they were held between Monday, Sept. 10, and Thursday, Sept. 13, and between Tuesday, Sept. 18, and Friday, Sept. 21.
The exercises also are designed to introduce the new students to high school and to nurture the ability to withstand peer pressure — especially when it comes to drugs.
“We’re trying hard to create some sort of personalization right off the bat, personalize the school environment,” said Lon Welsh, the Small Learning Communities Grant Director at the high school and who arranges for the National Guard participation. “We thought we could accomplish two things at once: the kids get to see the teachers in a little different light and the kids get to see themselves in a different light.”
“It’s drug-prevention training, but it does a lot more than drug prevention,” said Staff Sgt. Teresa Whalen with the Oregon Army National Guard, who serves as a facilitator of the program. “It’s a great team builder and Sandy likes to use it at both.”
All freshmen are required to take the Freshman Focus class, which also teaches study skills, college prep and looks at an educational plan and what students would like to do with their future.
However, Julie Slavick sees the inclusion of the National Guard as potentially opening a door for subtle recruitment for careers in the military.
“That’s part of recruiting; you don’t just get them when they’re in 11th and 12th grade, you build a relationship with them,” she said. “If you’ve built a relationship, they’re more likely to go in that direction.”
Victor Slavick said his classmates told him that the National Guard instructors discussed some aspects of life in the military.
“They said they told them stories, like war stories,” said Victor. “This one guy said he went to Iraq for six months and said it wasn’t that bad.”
That’s not what the Sandy High School teachers involved in the Freshman Focus class, have experienced, however.
“Whenever I brought that up to any of my teachers, they look at me like ‘No, none of that is going on,’ ” said Welsh. “I get quite a bit of reinforcement that they’re focused on doing what they say they’re trying to do.”
Uncomfortable with the uniform
The National Guard exercises have drawn an occasional complaint from parents in the past in other school districts. (Whalen and two other facilitators cover the entire state of Oregon.) Some of the complaints stem from the fact that the facilitators wear their National Guard uniforms when they lead a class, presenting an immediate image of the military.
Whalen, however, notes that wearing uniforms is part of their job and is not related to any subtle recruiting technique.
“What I told Principal (Brian Heinze) and what I usually tell the parents is the reason we’re in uniform is because that’s our daily wear,” said Whalen. “If a fireman or policeman came in that’s what they’d wear, not because they want to recruit but because that’s what they wear.”
“They wore their Army stuff, but it wasn’t very related to (the exercises),” said freshman Milo Rentenaar, 14, of Boring.
District officials note that information is sent to families and parents can opt their child out of the exercises. However, Julia Monteith, communications director for the district, reported that the district had not received a complaint about the exercises previously.
The district invites other outside organizations to speak or meet with groups of students as part of the educational process. According to the district’s policy, organizations must present ideas that “will have a demonstrable relation to the curricular or cocurricular activity in which the participating students are involved.”
Julie Slavick, for one, appreciates the effort that these organizations put into helping the students, but remains skeptical about what a group like the National Guard brings to the classroom.
“I think it’s great an outside body would want to do something like that, but it seems a little subversive to have military bonding with kids” she said.
The complaint comes on the heels of an attempt by several parents to ban and/or limit the presence of military recruiters at Sandy High School. That discussion last month resulted in a new policy that requires recruiters from the military and colleges to make appointments with the school, and gives students equal access to both groups. The school board discussed possibly creating a code of conduct for college and military representatives in response to allegations of pushy recruitment tactics.