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Families: Kids need more help, sensitivity

FORT BELVOIR, Va. — Military parents want easier school transitions for their children, more training for teachers to make sure they’re sensitive to the needs of military children, and more Defense Department schools. That’s what they told Jill Biden and defense and education officials at a roundtable here Tuesday.

“I hope some light is being shed on what it’s like to be in transition,” Netherlly Osei-Tutu, an Army wife and mother of three children, said after the roundtable. “This is the first school where my children came in and were not outsiders. The teachers here understand.”

The parents gave Fort Belvoir Elementary School high marks, but said one big problem is that schools are not consistent throughout the country.

“There should be consistency in standards and in transferring,” said Navy wife Renae Robinson, whose husband is deployed. She said some consistencies are being brought through the interstate compacts on the education of military children, but that many military parents are not aware of what their states have done.

She said social service programs, like the elementary school’s group for children whose parents are deployed, should be mandatory. “If you’re sitting next to Sally, who’s crying all the time, or is being a bully, maybe you’ll understand her if you know her daddy’s deployed,” Robinson said.

Parents said teachers need more training in being sensitive to the needs of military children. That includes teachers at Defense Department schools, said Army wife Madeline Lanza. Most Defense Department teachers are not military spouses, and may need more training in understanding the lifestyles of military children and recognizing signs of stress, she said.

Biden, who is an educator and a military mother, has been working with first lady Michelle Obama to spotlight the needs of military families. “I know how challenging life can be for you,” she told the families, and noted that the Defense and Education departments are working together to make sure military children have a good education.

She and the other officials visited a second-grade classroom and talked with the 18 students about their lives as military children.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said the visit “was a huge chance for me to listen and learn, to think about what works here, what lessons we can take around the country, and what are the challenges.” It’s very complicated for the parents, he said, and “we really have to think about how we’re supporting families” during deployment as well as through permanent change-of-station moves.

It’s important to have teachers and counselors who pay attention to these challenges when parents are gone, he said. “I talked to one little girl in the classroom whose father deployed last August. She’s the middle of three children, and to think of what she and her brothers are going through every day is mind-boggling,” he said.

“We have to support children and their families, make sure they’re able to be comfortable and confident, that they’re getting that emotional help so they can be successes academically. If we don’t pay attention to what they’re doing emotionally, it’s hard to concentrate in class. This school does an exemplary job ... but around the country we can do much better.”