To survive as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is simply living or existing. To be a champion as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is someone or something that has won a competition or contest. I spent many years in the foster care system simply surviving, and now have the opportunity to show foster youth that life can be so much more than simply surviving from day to day. While completing my formal education, I was always undecided on whether to pursue a career in social work or education. My decision came after serving as a volunteer educational liaison for the Department of Children and Family Services. It was clear to me that the most powerful tool to level the playing field for foster youth is education. As a current educator and coach, I see how education and character development transforms survivors into champions.
Upon my arrival in 2014 as a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) instructor, I was assigned additional coaching duties as the primary drill team and color guard coach. My initial focus was reviewing lesson plans, preparing the classroom, determining how best to manage the classroom, and which formative and summative assessments I would use. While being overwhelmed as a first year teacher, I knew at some point drill team practice would have to start soon. The school year started, and I was faced with 120 eager high school freshmen in my JROTC classroom. During class, I started to notice students with developmental delays. These delays included gross and fine motor skills, emotional disturbances, social disconnections, behavioral issues, and coping skills. As I started to contact the parents, I found a percentage of the students were currently in foster care. Placement of these youth included group homes, kinship care, and out of home placements. I reflected back and clearly understood why I was seeing the delays and behaviors. I also faced the same social disconnections, lack of coping skills, and behavioral issues as a foster youth. To develop into a psychologically healthy human being, a child must have a relationship with an adult who is nurturing, protective, and fosters trust and security.3 I learned throughout my 26-year military career and formal education studies that building positive and trusting relationships with students is critical to success as an educator. With over 500,000 children currently in foster care, a stable relationship with an adult built on trust and security is often not a reality. I knew spending one hour in class each day with these students would not enable me to establish a relationship built on trust and security. Building trusting relationships with students who have stable lives can be challenging, and it is even more challenging when you are trying to build trusting relationships with students who have not been able to trust anyone their entire life. Neglect has very profound and long-lasting consequences on all aspects of child development poor attachment formation, under stimulation, development delay, poor physical development, and antisocial behavior.1, 2
As a former foster youth, I lacked self-esteem, self-worth, avoided any social relationships, and rarely trusted anyone. I started to reflect and really chart how I could best reach these students. I put myself in their shoes, and realized they most likely see me as just another teacher, and this was simply just another class they had to get through. The primary purposes of the JROTC program is to teach students character education, student achievement, wellness, leadership, and diversity. Collectively, these lessons motivate students to be better citizens. In addition to promoting citizenship, JROTC also prepares students for college. We worked through character education lessons, study skills and habits, brain structure and function, leadership theories, and planned civic activities to help the community. While the lessons and activities reached some students, I still knew I had not even scratched the surface on allowing these foster youth to let me enter their worlds. Drill practice started, and we covered basic drill movements just as the team had performed over the last 20-years. I was looking for something exciting to capture the interest of these students, make them feel they were part of a team, build their self-worth, esteem, and show them they could live life as champions and not just survive from day to day.
Drill team practice continued, but the enthusiasm and spark I was looking for in the team was at a low. Previously, the drill team competed in a few smaller competitions each year with limited success. I decided we would attempt to form an armed exhibition drill team, which requires students to perform spinning movements with an 8-10 pound modified M1903 rifle. This seemed to spark initial enthusiasm. The next challenge facing the team was the reality of foster youth missing after school practice due to appointments. As a foster youth, your appointment schedule is always full. This includes visits by the social worker, medical appointments, court appointments, and counseling, which often take place after school. This limits the ability of many foster youth to participate in organized sports and after school club activities, which further limits their ability to form social connections which is critical for their development. In order for me to accommodate all of the students who desired to join the team, I knew I would have to work around appointments. Our drill schedule changed from 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm Monday – Thursday to a more radical schedule, which often found us practicing on Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons. One advantage to weekend practices ensured the team was using their time productively in the gym verses running the streets with bad influences. When we initially formed the team in August of 2014. I informed the team members that this was theirs team not mine. I let them know they had some decisions to make as a team. How far they would go and how fast was entirely up to them. I was there to support what the team decided. Much to my surprise, the team accepted the odd practice schedule, and eagerly volunteered to practice on weekends, and late evenings. This was the start to help accommodate the youth with many appointments. I also believe at this point that the team was challenging me to be dedicated at odd hours, and looking to see if I was all in, and they could trust me. Developing a routine, working on advanced spinning moves, and long practice sessions challenged our coping skills. There were many hours of frustration, and days, which we were all ready to throw in the towel. The initial frustrating sessions, which lasted for almost four months, enabled us to address behavioral issues as a team. We started talking through positive coping skills before practice, and techniques we could use to reduce anxiety. The use of positive coping skills and anxiety reduction techniques are invaluable tools for foster youth, as they experience anxiety, stress, and face the unknown each day of their lives. I started to realize there was much more happening at practice than just simply preparing to win a drill competition. Our next step was to establish team goals. The team developed these goals. In order to ensure the team took ownership, I knew the goals had to be theirs and not mine. We compared our team goals to goals in life, and the importance of ownership and perseverance.
The team’s initial goals were to simply form a team and compete in a few drill meets with less challenging teams. These goals started to change quickly as the team became more proficient. When we faced challenging days, we ensured to always pick up a marker and write our team goals on the white board. Goals such as increased professionalism, everyone attends practice, helping each other with schoolwork starting to surface. As these goals started to surface, behavior issues started to correct themselves during class. The students also understood I would accept no calls from other teachers informing me that one of the team members was being disruptive in class. My only goal for the team was simple, compete with character and have the hosting school tell me that our team was professional, polite, and that they would love to have us return to another of their drill meets.
As the team started to improve, I decided to have them perform at one of the high school’s pep assemblies. This would challenge their fears, anxiety, and demand they use coping skills learned in practice. They performed at the pep assembly in front of their peers, and they were a huge success in the eyes of their peers. I realized that for the team members who were foster youth, this was a first step to being accepted by their peers, and they now had a reason to hold their heads high and let their self-esteem and self-worth start shining. We continued to practice, and I started to look at scheduling drill meets for the season. I informed the team of the drill meet schedule, and they were concerned that we were entering drill meets against teams who were far above our level. While I was still not sure where we were headed, I hoped the challenging schedule would bring the team closer together, and challenge the foster youth to strive for excellence both on and off the court. My reasoning for scheduling more challenging drill meets was not to defeat the better teams, but give our team an opportunity to see what hard work, perseverance, and teamwork really looked like. This would also enable the team members to form additional relationships with other students, and live beyond their comfort zones.
We had just enough members to compete as a team. The loss of one member not being able to compete would have resulted in the team forfeiting the competition. I knew this might be challenging, as one of the foster youth needed special permissions to travel with the team. I was concerned that this might become an issue, and I really wanted the early success of the team to continue. When I define success, I like to think of success for foster youth and all youth as improved social connections, improved behavior in the classroom, improved grades, and a display of positive coping skills regardless of the situation. I found the additional hours at practice gave me an opportunity to build trust, and discuss what the future could hold for them. We were able to travel with all team members after permissions were granted, and the team secured their 1st place finish ever in an armed exhibition drill competition. As the team continued to win, I started emphasizing the importance of character, behavior, academics, and giving back to others. Abused and neglected children (in or out of foster care) are at great risk for not forming healthy attachments to anyone.4, 5 Healthy attachments were starting to form between the foster youth and other team members. These healthy attachments resulted in social connections, which sparked the team members to help each other with challenging schoolwork, discuss options for college, and discuss opportunities to promote success in life.
Since the team’s conception in 2014, they have placed 11th in the nation among all Army JROTC teams, and recently placed 7th in 2016 during the Army Drill Nationals in Louisville, Kentucky. While many might view the trophies and national rankings as success, I see the success, which has opened so many to future success for these foster youth. They are task-focused in school, continually looking at secondary education options, character role models for all students in the high school, and are on track for a bright future. Their coping skills have improved, self-esteem and self-worth is evident, and their academic performance has greatly improved. One of the academically struggling youth now makes it a point to show me his grades on a consistent basis.
In addition, foster youth excelled our JROTC Raider Team to a 2nd place national finish this year. Improving educational outcomes, fostering caring environments, and going the extra step to build trust with foster youth is the most rewarding experience of my life. Given the right conditions coupled with strong character development, and these kids will simply amaze you every time. I was especially proud of one of our foster youth this summer when he received the leadership award at summer camp among several hundred kids. These kids are being selected for boys and girl’s state, receiving college scholarships, giving back to their communities, and using their skills to clear a successful path for all foster youth. These kids understand the importance of character, education, and the impacts they have on development and future success. These kids are not only overcoming experiences from their pasts, but are also assisting others with their experiences and transforming them from survivors to champions.
None of this would have been possible without the support of my two colleagues Meghan Fadl and Charles Williams, my always forgiving and supportive family, the social service workers who believe in these kids, the parents and care givers who support the team, the many teachers and coaches who worked with us, a simply wonderful administration and staff at the school district, and our gracious booster club who ensured our team had everything we needed.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski