Why A Colonel Is Retiring Early — To Become High School Teacher

[Richard]

Quite an interesting statement he's making with this decision...

Paul Yingling is a Colonel in the U.S. Army and a professor of security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Marshall Center or the Department of Defense.

Richard

Why An Army Colonel Is Retiring Early — To Become A High School Teacher
WaPo, 2 Dec 2011

I’m a colonel in the U.S. Army, and next summer I will retire to teach high school social studies. My friends think I’m crazy, and they may have a point.

Colonel is the last rank before general’s stars, and it comes with significant perks. My pay is triple the national average teacher’s salary. Military budgets have doubled over the past decade, while school districts have slashed funding, increased class sizes, cut programs and laid off teachers. The social status accorded to the military is wonderful, while teachers are routinely pilloried by politicians and pundits for student outcomes that are often driven by events and conditions far beyond the schoolhouse door.

My friends express these concerns reluctantly; they may hold teaching in low regard but don’t want to be seen as holding it in low regard. More important, they remind me, I’m not just any soldier. Casting aside false modesty (the only kind we colonels know), I admit that my military career has followed an unusual path. Over the past decade, I’ve written articles and given speeches on the failure of senior officers to adapt to the challenges of irregular warfare. I’ve advocated reforming the military’s seniority-based personnel system to reward moral courage and intellectual rigor. My best-known article, “A Failure in Generalship,” appeared in 2007 and caused the Army to rethink the way it educates its generals. My work on warfare and leadership has been cited by political leaders and included in the curricula of military academies and war colleges.

My friends and colleagues assumed that I had a bright future in the Army, or else a lucrative new career as a defense contractor or consultant. They expected that, at age 45, I would do something more with the second half of my professional life. Not just different, but more — meaning that teaching isn’t very much, or at least not as much as I could do.

So why teach? For me, the answer lies in two moments. The first has occurred a half-dozen times over the past five years in conversations with four-star generals and politicians. Behind closed doors in Washington, there is widespread recognition that while our troops are remarkable, the great majority of our generals are not. In private meetings with senior leaders, I explain how parochialism, ambition and greed have corrupted our national security apparatus. Bad advice and bad decisions are not accidents, but the results of a system that rewards bad behavior.

When I finish, I see a glimmer of recognition in their faces, a sense that the problems I’ve described are real but not intractable. They ask a question, and then interrupt my answer with another, and another after that: We’re better than this, aren’t we? But soon the glimmer fades, and the eyes shift downward, as if to calculate the odds and costs of reforming an entrenched bureaucracy. The voices go flat and the faces impassive.

The second moment is the polar opposite. Unbeknownst to all but my closest friends, my great passion is not military reform but youth baseball. I’ve coached since my 18-year-old son was old enough to hold a bat, and at all ages from preschool to high school. Every spring, I tell each kid to have fun, hustle every play, get better every day and be a good teammate. Every batting practice, I give the same tips — hands back, knees bent, level swing, eye on the ball.

Every season, there is at least one kid who just doesn’t get it, who is embarrassed about not getting it, who leaves practice on the verge of tears, determined never to pick up a baseball again. Every season, I work with that kid one on one, before and after practice, on Sunday afternoons, anytime when other kids aren’t looking and there’s no reason to be embarrassed. After about the third practice, I see in that kid a glimmer of recognition, a sense that he or she is getting it, can do it and doesn’t have to be embarrassed.

There is no calculation of odds or costs, only a sense of expanding possibilities. The glimmer grows each day — if I can hit a ball, what else can I do? It spreads — if one of us can get better, why can’t we all? This moment becomes a series of moments, experienced individually and as part of a larger whole.

Spring turns into summer, and this series of moments becomes a set of habits. These habits — a passion for excellence, a willingness to work, a commitment to others — are more about character than baseball. Shaped carefully, they cement the foundation of a young person’s character.

Weighing these two moments, and alternative futures filled with many more like them, my new career choice became as obvious to me as it was perplexing to my friends. I will leave the Army two years too early to retire with the benefits of a full colonel, but just in time to start teaching next fall. Though I lack an education degree or experience as a student teacher, the Troops to Teachers program helped me complete the requirements for certification as a non-traditional teacher, an apt description of me if ever there was one.

Another high school teacher, Aristotle, believed that people form communities not just to preserve life but to pursue the good life. The iconic, life-preserving figures of the post-9/11 era — soldiers, police officers, firefighters — certainly deserve the adulation they receive. However, security is merely instrumental; peace and freedom make a good life possible but not inevitable. Especially in a democracy, we ought to respect most those who foster the character traits that make self-government attainable — parents and teachers, coaches and ministers, poets and protesters. When I hear the Army motto, “This We’ll Defend,” it’s them I have in mind.

I’ve served five combat tours in Desert Storm, the Balkans and Iraq, and I’ve had cause to reflect on what it means to live well. It has little to do with money or social status or proximity to power. Instead, amid the clamor of a youth baseball practice, I’m part of a conversation on character that echoes in eternity. The opportunity to engage in that conversation more often is why I want to teach.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...AMO_print.html

[JimP]

Paul is truly a gem in the military of today. He will be missed. I worked with him up in 2ID before the war(s) kicked off and before he became "famous". He is a humble, talented and inspiring individual. I wish him luck. The military will be poorer for losing him.

[ZonieDiver]

I initially shuddered when I read that "we'd" have another coach in the social studies department, somewhere.

The colonel sounds like the man who can do justice to both jobs, for the last thing social studies needs these days is another "full-time coach" and "part-time teacher"!

[mojaveman]

Two of my favorite teachers during my school years were both retired military. Both were pilots, one during WWII and the other during the Korean War. One was an English teacher and the other a math teacher, but they would have made great history teachers. Those of us who had an interest in military things would listen in awe to their stories. They were both great instructors by the way. One student who I knew well and who was a perfect anus orifice was cutting up bad in class one day and said the wrong thing, Mr. Reese picked the kid up and put him against the wall. That was all it took, he didn't display anymore lack of respect for the rest of the semester. That was almost 40 years ago and sometimes I think a better time...

[Badger52]

Thank you Richard. Forwarding to daughter who's contemplating exactly the call COL Yingling is following at her retirement. Although having some apprehensions I think she knows her breadth of experience has, in a way, prepared her for travel down the road of teaching others. (The "old man" already knows that.)

[alright4u]

Originally Posted by Richard

Quite an interesting statement he's making with this decision...

Paul Yingling is a Colonel in the U.S. Army and a professor of security studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Marshall Center or the Department of Defense.

Richard

Why An Army Colonel Is Retiring Early — To Become A High School Teacher
WaPo, 2 Dec 2011

I’m a colonel in the U.S. Army, and next summer I will retire to teach high school social studies. My friends think I’m crazy, and they may have a point.

Colonel is the last rank before general’s stars, and it comes with significant perks. My pay is triple the national average teacher’s salary. Military budgets have doubled over the past decade, while school districts have slashed funding, increased class sizes, cut programs and laid off teachers. The social status accorded to the military is wonderful, while teachers are routinely pilloried by politicians and pundits for student outcomes that are often driven by events and conditions far beyond the schoolhouse door.

My friends express these concerns reluctantly; they may hold teaching in low regard but don’t want to be seen as holding it in low regard. More important, they remind me, I’m not just any soldier. Casting aside false modesty (the only kind we colonels know), I admit that my military career has followed an unusual path. Over the past decade, I’ve written articles and given speeches on the failure of senior officers to adapt to the challenges of irregular warfare. I’ve advocated reforming the military’s seniority-based personnel system to reward moral courage and intellectual rigor. My best-known article, “A Failure in Generalship,” appeared in 2007 and caused the Army to rethink the way it educates its generals. My work on warfare and leadership has been cited by political leaders and included in the curricula of military academies and war colleges.

My friends and colleagues assumed that I had a bright future in the Army, or else a lucrative new career as a defense contractor or consultant. They expected that, at age 45, I would do something more with the second half of my professional life. Not just different, but more — meaning that teaching isn’t very much, or at least not as much as I could do.

So why teach? For me, the answer lies in two moments. The first has occurred a half-dozen times over the past five years in conversations with four-star generals and politicians. Behind closed doors in Washington, there is widespread recognition that while our troops are remarkable, the great majority of our generals are not. In private meetings with senior leaders, I explain how parochialism, ambition and greed have corrupted our national security apparatus. Bad advice and bad decisions are not accidents, but the results of a system that rewards bad behavior.

When I finish, I see a glimmer of recognition in their faces, a sense that the problems I’ve described are real but not intractable. They ask a question, and then interrupt my answer with another, and another after that: We’re better than this, aren’t we? But soon the glimmer fades, and the eyes shift downward, as if to calculate the odds and costs of reforming an entrenched bureaucracy. The voices go flat and the faces impassive.

The second moment is the polar opposite. Unbeknownst to all but my closest friends, my great passion is not military reform but youth baseball. I’ve coached since my 18-year-old son was old enough to hold a bat, and at all ages from preschool to high school. Every spring, I tell each kid to have fun, hustle every play, get better every day and be a good teammate. Every batting practice, I give the same tips — hands back, knees bent, level swing, eye on the ball.

Every season, there is at least one kid who just doesn’t get it, who is embarrassed about not getting it, who leaves practice on the verge of tears, determined never to pick up a baseball again. Every season, I work with that kid one on one, before and after practice, on Sunday afternoons, anytime when other kids aren’t looking and there’s no reason to be embarrassed. After about the third practice, I see in that kid a glimmer of recognition, a sense that he or she is getting it, can do it and doesn’t have to be embarrassed.

There is no calculation of odds or costs, only a sense of expanding possibilities. The glimmer grows each day — if I can hit a ball, what else can I do? It spreads — if one of us can get better, why can’t we all? This moment becomes a series of moments, experienced individually and as part of a larger whole.

Spring turns into summer, and this series of moments becomes a set of habits. These habits — a passion for excellence, a willingness to work, a commitment to others — are more about character than baseball. Shaped carefully, they cement the foundation of a young person’s character.

Weighing these two moments, and alternative futures filled with many more like them, my new career choice became as obvious to me as it was perplexing to my friends. I will leave the Army two years too early to retire with the benefits of a full colonel, but just in time to start teaching next fall. Though I lack an education degree or experience as a student teacher, the Troops to Teachers program helped me complete the requirements for certification as a non-traditional teacher, an apt description of me if ever there was one.

Another high school teacher, Aristotle, believed that people form communities not just to preserve life but to pursue the good life. The iconic, life-preserving figures of the post-9/11 era — soldiers, police officers, firefighters — certainly deserve the adulation they receive. However, security is merely instrumental; peace and freedom make a good life possible but not inevitable. Especially in a democracy, we ought to respect most those who foster the character traits that make self-government attainable — parents and teachers, coaches and ministers, poets and protesters. When I hear the Army motto, “This We’ll Defend,” it’s them I have in mind.

I’ve served five combat tours in Desert Storm, the Balkans and Iraq, and I’ve had cause to reflect on what it means to live well. It has little to do with money or social status or proximity to power. Instead, amid the clamor of a youth baseball practice, I’m part of a conversation on character that echoes in eternity. The opportunity to engage in that conversation more often is why I want to teach.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...AMO_print.html

I ask in a serious manner as I played all three sports as a military dependent. Not a single officer in 1956-59 had the time to coach full time. It was always those great NCO's who coached me in little league to Babe Ruth league. I even played for the toppers (Top NCO's) and; I pissed off many an officer friend of my father's by pitching two straight no hitters against the senior officer's kids team. I hope to find a photo of those NCO's kids sitting at the O Club with me eating dinner during the award ceremony. It was not what it was supposed to be as the club was already booked for the event. After dinner we got the championship trophy and my pals were out the damn door.

[Utah Bob]

Best teacher I ever had was a retired Armor Col. who had a tank battalion in the Bulge.

[Gypsy]

Originally Posted by JimP

The military will be poorer for losing him.

It sounds like the lives of those he teaches will be richer.


Best of luck Colonel, your future "kids" will be lucky to have you in their lives.

[craigepo]

We need more ex-military involvement in schools. Good read.