The Senior Army Instructor; Teaching Junior ROTC

My newest book. “The Senior Army Instructor: The Paul Tyler Saga Begins”, is now available online in Kindle e-book format. It is also currently available in LARGE Print and the paperback and hard cover will be online shortly.

The Senior Army Instructor:   The Paul Tyler Saga Begins! A NEW Novel         BY Peter A. Taylor

This book is a prequel of the “Advisor series”, as is the Tuscarora Trail” it’s ending.

Throughout the “Advisor series”, at one point or another I mentioned the fact that our hero, Paul Tyler, retired from teaching JROTC at the high school level for seventeen years.

In reality I actually did teach for seventeen years, and it was an interesting part of my life. The life of a JROTC instructor is demanding. The average teacher teaches five classes a day and unless they have papers to take home and grade their day is over. In the case of a JROTC instructor there are a number of extracurricular activities that are required by the United States Army’s Cadet Command. Each JROTC unit at the high school level is graded by the Department of War on their performance of some of these extracurricular activities. Good examples of these are a rifle team, a drill team, a color guard, and in many areas a Raider team.

Each of these extracurricular activities requires an additional ten to fifteen hours per week of an instructor’s time at the end of the school day. It also requires extensive weekends working with cadets and participating in various activities.

JROTC instructors are also required to take their cadets to a one week summer camp every year. In my case as the senior army officer in the state of West Virginia for a few years, I was also required to attend all types of meetings and represent the JROTC Program at the state level.

All of these additional duties are required and not compensated.

I was never complaining about pay. Unlike a standard teacher I was being paid as if I was still a Lieutenant Colonel on active duty. There were some differences in pay from being on active duty, especially when it came to taxes. As a Lieutenant Colonel my pay was roughly $110,000 a year, which is far higher than what our standard teachers make, which is a shame. Now if you think that the school was paying me that much money, you’re mistaken.

Of that $110,000 roughly 55% of it was deducted for compensation for my military retired pay. The remaining $60,500 was divided in half with the United States Army paying about $30,250 and the school reimbursing me for an equal amount. We were actually being paid less than a brand-new teacher by the school system with a bachelor’s degree and teacher certification. This makes the program affordable to many schools.

So, what were they getting when they got an Army Junior ROTC program?

Well they got a program, not just a course. When I say that they got a program, they received an excellent curriculum designed by professional educators to instill leadership and patriotism, physical fitness and health classes, discipline, military history, and a host of life-science type classes. Additionally, the curriculum was designed so that there was a large amount of leeway, and the instructors could add other material to the course. They also got something that is difficult to quantify, and that is the unique professional and life experiences that retired military personnel bring to the civilian life when they retire. Myself and my NCO’s had travelled throughout the world on a number of military assignments. We had extensive educational backgrounds and experiences in teaching and instructing that are valuable assets to the educational community.

In my case I brought a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and a doctorate equivalent, a terminal professional education program, with completion of the US Army War College. Both of my NCOs had associate degrees and continued working on their civilian education while they worked for me. Couple this with life experiences that are important teaching: dealing with people, problem solving, detailed planning, and all of the other attributes that a soldier brings to the workplace. We also had worked with teenagers for an entire career. When you think about it our chief mission was to take teenagers and young adults and turn them into professional soldiers.

Some curriculum examples:

We would spend almost one month on marksmanship training. The program provided us with.177 pellet rifles as well as all of the equipment that was needed for the cadets to learn how to shoot and handle weapons properly. Prior to starting the class, we would spend almost a week on gun safety. Gun safety was rigorously enforced, and the students were constantly supervised by the two instructors. Not only did they learn about weapons safety, but they also learned how to shoot. Many of the students who were excellent marksmen and markswomen were invited to shoot on the rifle team. Many of the students had never handled a weapon before in their life and for them it was a new experience, thrilling and in some cases scary. But they learned how to shoot, and they learned how to do it safely. During our safety instruction not only would we teach them about the rules of handling weapon we would also have the local police officers come in and talk to them about safety of the weapons that they might have at home. Our Chief-of-Police would often come in and talk to the cadets and give them trigger safety guards to take home to put on weapons that they might be storing at home.

I would spend almost a month with my upperclassmen on the United States Constitution. I would explain to them that when they finished that class, they would be part of 8% of the nation. It was estimated that only 8% of the citizens of the United States have ever read the constitution from its preamble to its final amendment. We would painstakingly go over each section of the constitution and delve into what it said and why our founding fathers had used that particular language.

We spent nearly a month on First Aid and CPR training. By the end of the sessions the cadets were issued a card indicating that they were certified by either the American Red Cross, or the American Heart Association and the Department of the Army since it was taught to those standards.

Physical fitness was a very big part of our program. It was sad when you would go into the gymnasium on a school day and see all of the students who were not participating in PE. I don’t know why they didn’t participate but many of them didn’t. Cadets didn’t have that option. Every Friday was physical fitness day and we would spend the entire class period in physical fitness training; everyone participated. I even had a blind girl who was assigned to the program who would go to the track and run with us. She was tethered to a guide who would keep her in the lane, tell her when the turns were coming and guide her around the track. Now don’t get me wrong she never set any track records, but she participated in the program with the rest of the cadets.

We dealt with a lot of special education students. The vast majority of them loved the program because they were doing something and not sitting there listening to a teacher lecture them.

Teaching this program was a very rewarding experience. The hours were long, the frustration levels were high often with school administration, like every teacher. But the amazing thing was the aftermath, after I retired. It’s rare that I can go into a store in the area and not have some person come up to me and thank me for teaching them in JROTC, in many cases I don’t know who they are. You must remember they were little kids when I taught them and now, they’re grown up.

The program that John and I established, has now been around for over 30 years. The current Senior Army Instructor told me one time that he was now working on the 3rd generation of cadets. They were the grandkids of some of our original cadets. So, the program survived my retirement and continues to thrive today to motivate young people to be better citizens.

My new book tells many of the stories about some of the students that I dealt with. Some of the stories are funny some of them are sad; they’re actually based on my exposure to different students throughout the years. Many of the stories are composited, the story line may focus on one student but actually it may be a composite of a number of my over 3,500 former cadets.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GSXJ2ZHC?ref_=saga_ast_ss_dsk_dp

Needless to say, since it’s a novel none of the names are real in the book, the location has changed from West Virginia to Indiana, but hopefully you’ll enjoy the stories and if you are one of my former students maybe you’ll even know who you are in the book. But I will never admit it.

I hope that you will enjoy the book. It begins the series, but it was written out of sequence.

If you’re enjoying these blogs please drop me a comment or if you have any questions that I might answer, again submit a comment on the comment pages. I’m always glad to hear from you.

Again, please take a look at all of my books that I have listed. They can be purchased from Amazon.com with the click of a button directly from my website, www.ptaylorvietnamadvisor.com.  Until next Friday, Have a good week.

The Advisor Series:

• “The Advisor, Kien Bing, South Vietnam, 1969-1970. A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B09L4X5NQ3)
• “The Province Senior Intelligence Advisor, Kien Song Province 1970-1971; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0BHL2XCX5)
• “The Hardchargers,” Vietnam 1972-1973; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0C7SPR1JY)
• “The Tuscarora Trail” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0D3QY2GM6)

Check out my website for other books that I’ve written or edited.

Website: ptaylorvietnamadvisor.com