After being here a little over a month, I’ve come to realize that a lot of people really don’t understand what a military school is, and what we do for boys. I came across a good article titled 10 Facts about Military Schools from about.com, written by Robert Kennedy from Canada.

(http://privateschool.about.com/od/schoolsmilitary/a/militaryschoolfacts.htm)

Before I started at MMA, I too held misconceived notions of what a military school is all about. I figured that about half of our cadets would join the military right after graduation – but in reality it’s only about 2%.  That’s about one cadet every year in our senior class.  And they often attend one of the service academies to become an officer in lieu of enlisting, like our senior cadet Luis Gonzalez.

The article talks about discipline. We instill discipline in our cadets.  Self-discipline. If you know anyone from the armed forces, you know that this is one of the building blocks of the military.  Self-discipline is the thing that will take you where you need to go in all aspects of life.

In our case, discipline is very important to our structured learning environment.  We have clear rules and fair consequences for breaking them. For example, if a student’s grades are not satisfactory, they are assigned to mandatory study hall.  Free time and privileges such as cell phones are taken away. We have a very structured schedule, so the boys’ free time is precious.

We also reward academic achievement and good discipline with awards, promotions and special privileges. And despite what you’ve always thought about military school, we actually much prefer to do that than to issue consequences!

Our disciplinary process can correct minor behavioral problems typically brought on by the lack of challenge or structure in a public school, but we can’t “fix” a boy who is into drugs, who has major behavioral problems, is fighting or running away.  We typically don’t accept these students because we are not a lock down facility – your son has to want to come here and want to be a part of our community in order for our system to work.

The article also mentions character, a word we use a lot on campus. In our academic building, we display it in nine different languages to remind the boys how universally important it is.  We want to build up their character so they become outstanding men in their community and have respect and dignity for themselves and others.  Putting cadets in leadership positions and instilling a “we all succeed or none of us succeeds” value system in the barracks helps cadets learn to look beyond themselves. Every high school cadet is required to perform 20 hours of community service per year, which develops a sense of community and integrity. We expect our boys to leave MMA as gentlemen, ready to serve their families, their communities and their careers.

These are just two facts from the article that I thought were the most important to learn about our Academy.  I encourage you to read the rest of the article.  (It’s short!  Always a plus for those of us working in this fast paced world)

I had a chance to talk with one of our exemplary cadets recently, Luis Gonzalez of San Diego, California.  He’s a US resident and splits his time between California and Tijuana, Mexico.  It was an  opportunity to get to know one of our cadets and to learn about his personal MMA experience.

Luis has spent 3 years here.  He started in the 10^th grade and is now completing his senior year.  He really wanted to go to a military school to help him get into one of the U.S. service academies, so his mother found MMA.  It’s been his dream to attend a service academy since he was in sixth grade – in fact, he still has the piece of paper on which he wrote down his goal!

All of our boys come here for different reasons – the love of the military, for the structured environment, to learn self-discipline and leadership skills, to improve their study habits or to learn to speak English well.  All want to achieve good grades, take advantage of our AP classes and Dual Credit Courses and get into a good college or university.

Luis wants to join the military after graduation and come this summer he will reach his goal.  He’s joining the Air Force by way of the Air Force Academy.  He’s a little nervous about the high altitude in Colorado Springs, but I’m sure he will do fine. (Just take deep breaths!!)  He’s thinking about studying aerospace engineering or intelligence and wants to be either a fighter pilot or in special operations.

I personally think he will achieve great things in life.  He’s very poised, a great communicator; expresses his opinions with respect and is the all around wonderful son every mother would be proud to have.

MMA was his first boarding school experience, though he did go to private schools before.  When he first arrived, he was a bit

scared and a little homesick.  It “sucked” being away from home, family and friends.  But in his first year, his platoon sergeant (a fellow cadet leader) kept him way too busy to even think of home (busy = not homesick). In his second year, he became the platoon sergeant in charge of 25 cadets.  He did everything: tucked some cadets in at night, gave out hugs to those who needed them, and even mentored a boy who was two years older.  Being a platoon sergeant was a challenge. A lot of his free time was spent helping out his fellow cadets and studying.  (Yea for studying!)  As a senior, he became the battalion S-3 leader and later became the Battalion XO. (That’s one of the top guys.)

His favorite extracurricular group is the Railsplitters. (www.railsplitterslivinghistory.org)  He loves this group because it offers a realistic military experience, camping, running around in the mud and reenacting WWII battles.

In his three years here, Luis came to understand that you will always encounter inefficient people and inopportune situations. You just need to learn how to deal with them to improve the situation and come out ahead. I would say that by learning that lesson, he is already ahead of the game!

Finally, we did talk about what Luis would like to change about MMA (jokily) “I would like to see a girls’ boarding school built next door.” (Pretty sure that’s NOT gonna happen.)

Luis has what I call the 3-Ds; Dedication, Determination and Diligence.  If you have these qualities, then MMA might be the place for you.

Hi everyone!  Let me start off by saying that I’m Carrie Marston, a new Admissions Counselor at Missouri Military Academy and I’ve started a new blog for our Academy.  It’s all about life at MMA – our cadets, parents, teachers and staff.

What could we possibly have to talk about?  Well, if you knew me, you would know that I love to talk about everything and to anyone who is willing to listen, so I convinced the Director of Admissions to let me loose on a blog.  This week’s blog will be about me so you can get to know me, to understand why I came to the Academy and why I think it would be a great fit for your son.

I was raised in a suburb of Oklahoma City.  After graduating from high school I went to college at Oklahoma State University (GO POKES!) where I studied Biochemistry and played rugby.  I graduated early, thanks to all those AP classes I took in high school, and joined the Peace Corps.  I was sent to El Salvador (Hola!) where I lived in a small community of about 600 and worked with a clinic to teach the locals about health.  It’s where my career in education started and I haven’t really looked back.  After returning home when my two-year service was completed, I decided to go back to school for nursing. It was then that I discovered that I really loved education more than health, so I moved to South Korea to teach English as a Second Language to elementary school kids. After a year I moved to the country’s capital, Seoul, and taught elementary school kids, parents and teachers.  I loved South Korea so much that I was thinking about not coming back, but my family and friends wanted me to, so I did.

After some time in the States, I decided I wasn’t quite done with my travels, so I joined the Peace Corps again. This time I was sent to a town called Voinjama, Liberia, Africa.  I taught high school Geometry and Chemistry.  Due to their country’s 15-plus years of civil war, most of my students were anywhere from 20 to 45 in age.  I really liked teaching there but my time was cut short due to the fact that my town erupted in civil unrest.  (Apparently running and ducking from gun fire isn’t as much fun as one would think.)

As soon as I got back, I went to the Missouri Military Academy’s website,  www.missourimilitaryacademy.org , and found a job that would be perfect for me – Admissions Counselor.  I get to talk with all kinds of people, get to visit them in their homes and show off a wonderful campus.  What more could I ask for?

The more I get to know about our Academy, the more I love it!  It’s not the military school that the movies portray.  It’s a structured environment, with a low teacher to student ratio (1:11) that empowers boys.  Our main focus is to educate the cadet and build his character.  We have two very different departments to help with that.  Our Academic Dean is in charge of the boys’ grades, making sure he’s completing studies and getting the extra help if he needs it.  The Commandant is in charge of building our boys’ character, teaching them to be gentlemen who act with respect and dignity.  The military type structure is to help facilitate this change in the boys.

We want every boy to attend college, so we have a Director of College Placement who makes sure every boy has been accepted into college. He also helps them apply for scholarships.  This year, we have 46 seniors. They have all been accepted into at least one college and have earned over 3 million dollars in scholarships and still counting!!!  (That’s an average of $65,000 per student!)

There is so much to learn about MMA. I hope you check my blog often to learn more about this school that has been around for 121 years.

Next time we will interview a current MMA senior to get what his real feelings are about the MMA experience. We’ll talk about his plans for college and beyond…as well as his likes and dislikes about the Academy.