Military children go to school, too!

A recent report has suggested that schools should work harder to make new children feel welcome in their new school. This applies very well to military kids because they're constantly moving around to new schools. The article discussed that children who feel connected to their school was half as likely to attempt suicide and are 40% less likely to be violent. Also, "One-tenth of a percent of 'connected' high school seniors have ever been pregnant, compared to 22 percent of those reporting little connection." [Article link (registration required)]

It is a fact of life for a military brat (like myself) that you have to change schools frequently. Sometimes it's a relief to move away, sometimes is extraordinarily traumatic to leave some of your favorite teachers and good friends in the middle of the day before the school year ends because you have to move away, never to return. I know the hurt and the difficulty to work yourself into a new school. School districts will generally have military kids going to one set of schools by districting the base in that fashion. These schools generally have not only special programs that help new students get integrated no matter when they come in (since a child enrolling in the middle of the year is more the norm than the exception in these schools), they also tend to have a completely different culture. In my high school, a sizeable portion of the student body were military brats. As a result, the typical cliques that tend to form in high schools either never formed or they had little political power. There were just the jocks (very low powered; I never noticed them), cheerleaders (not as much power as you would think; most were mean, valley-girl types that most people ignored), and Air Force Junior ROTC (very powerful; probably about 1/3 of all students were enrolled in JROTC, several of those in the drill team). The cliques couldn't form well because the population changes so much. Plus, the lunch tables were round, so unless you found a table all by yourself, you're face to face with someone. The military had an enormous impact on my high school.