From the Corps to the Classroom: Teaching History As a Marine Veteran

I find it ironic, looking back on the last 16 years as a teacher and coach, how much being in the Marines became central to my career identity. When I got out, I didn’t wear Marine tee shirts or keep a high and tight. I was proud and enjoyed my service, but I never considered it a large part of me. That chapter closed when I drove off Camp Lejeune in September of ‘98. But it turns out that my military experiences have afforded me a perspective that has become part of my identity as an educator in all sorts of unexpected ways.

I served in the United States Marine Corps from 1994 to 1998 as an 0311 (infantry rifleman) assigned to 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion as a scout. When I enlisted, I imagined a career in the Corps and had no ambition to be an educator. However, my experiences in the Marines plus the GI Bill afforded me the opportunity to pursue an education, which led to me becoming a teacher. I majored in history and political science and started teaching social studies in 2006. Soon, my veteran identity became part and parcel of my classroom.

That first year, I used my veteran status as a way to build connections. I had a number of students whose parents had served, so it became a way to relate to students and parents. I found myself leaning into a sergeant persona, sometimes introducing lessons and their objectives in loud vocal military cadence. Students loved it. They thought it was hilarious and ridiculous at the same time. But it gave me a tool as a new teacher to engage or change it up. I went from Mr. Anderson to Sgt. Anderson like Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde. It became a kind of strategy.

I also use my infantry experiences in the classroom. For example, one year, while teaching the Vietnam War, I took a couple of days to delve into guerilla warfare and combat in jungle terrain. I created stations that explored how the terrain of South Vietnam was used to fight, from tunnel warfare to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I built models of many of the booby traps and trip wires (obviously not live or dangerous) that were commonly encountered by American patrols in Vietnam.

Then I was able to use my own deployment to the Panama Canal, which has terrain very similar to Vietnam, to tie it all together. My time in service was a generation after the American war in Vietnam ended, but I have gone on patrol in a triple canopy jungle. I can talk of the smells, the fears at night of the sounds, and then I can use primary sources to help students add the emotional reality of being in a war zone to it all. I am able to use my own experiences to bring the regular daily events of life as a grunt to the class, a topic that is often lost as we study causes, politics, and impacts of war at home and abroad. 

I’ve used this experience as a guest speaker in colleagues’ classrooms, too. When I speak about my time in the Panama Canal Zone, students are blown away by the pictures of patrolling in the jungles, spending the night with the critters or the bugs that are constant companions in the field, regardless of terrain. They love the stories of cards in the barracks, of rapid response forces to the embassy, or of drilling wells for villagers in the mountains. It’s a way to humanize the numbers we hear on the news or the lists of casualties from past wars we teach to students.

Once students find out I was in the military they want stories. Their young civilian minds are full of Hollywood and video games, and it doesn't take long before people start asking questions. Once, I had a colleague come up to me to say that they couldn't imagine being a sniper. I was completely baffled since I never served as a sniper. After a little digging, we figured out that we had a shared student who had taken a piece of a story about my squad leader and unintentionally embellished it! Somehow, I went from someone who had played sniper observation games as part of my squad leader’s efforts to improve the squad’s skills to being a scout sniper with confirmed kills.

These kinds of misunderstandings happen all the time. As a veteran, I realized real quick that beyond the recruiters in the lunchroom, I might be the only veteran that some students know in person, or sometimes even have interacted with. I have found myself a resource for my colleagues when they or their students have questions, including serving as an informal career military counselor. Students who are interested in the armed forces just seem to find my room, and at some point we unpack taking the ASVAB and how what the recruiters say is not always what the job will be.

I have also found that my veteran status makes me the informal expert on school security. Every time we do active shooter drills, students tell me that if it were a real event, they’d want to be in my room. They firmly believe that my time in the Marines means that I can wade into fire and remove the threat. It’s always an interesting discussion that leads into the ethics of defense. I ask them if I’m morally obligated to secure their security or to preserve the life of my kids’ father? What about if I’d prefer to be the first one out the window? It never fails: they always look deep in thought before arriving at the decision that in the event, despite my questions, I will in fact stride into the halls to nullify the threat with nothing but my ruler at my side.

My colleagues have made related assumptions, although in some of those cases, my background has had beneficial real-world effects. I never served in combat, but by virtue of training for it, I could use those skills to help ensure security in our hallways. One time at a meeting with our local police department, we were discussing active shooter response and why the Cedar Rapids Police Department didn’t feel that educators needed active shooter simulation training. Some colleagues started getting after the cops, and the meeting went south. I ended up stepping in to let them know that a weekend of training would not help them with flight or fight in the event of hearing gunshots and seeing dead students. Marines and soldiers who spend months and years training for war sometimes lock up in combat. There is no way to prepare for an active shooter in a two-hour PD. I ended up working with building administrators to develop a tactical plan for evacuation and protocol for teachers in classrooms. Eventually this found me on a district security team that worked with local law enforcement and a panel of security experts to help in developing plans for buildings.

Most recently, on the TikTok “national school shooter day,” as I patrolled the halls and foyer, many colleagues and students told me that they felt safer just by virtue of my presence. There certainly seems to be some kind of veteran mystique that I hope is never tested. 

Being a veteran brings a wealth of perspectives and experiences to classrooms, school buildings, athletic fields, and districts, and it comes with a lot of informal hats to wear. But I’ve found that it’s also a tool. It’s vehicle to relate to and inform students. There is credibility that comes with it because I’ve done the work. It turns out I have the tee shirt after all, whether I meant to wear it or not. I really hope we can get more veterans in school hallways. We need them. I can’t imagine what kind of teacher I would be without it.