April is Month of the Military Child!  This special celebration is a legacy of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger – established to underscore the important role children play in the Armed Forces community.

Thanks to Lauren, Grade 11, Hohenfels Middle High School, Hohenfels, Germany, U.S. Army, for the winning submission for this year's poster competition!

Celebrate by downloading our Month of the Military Child poster.

Click here to download poster

Looking to the Future of Military Children | VAntage Point
As a young child, Dr. Margaret Harrell boasted a vernacular far different from the rest of her classmates. While other fathers were accountants and lawyers, her father was in the military, where she picked up a dizzying array of acronyms and insider language few outside the business understood.

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Supporting Children of the National Guard and Reserve Institute is a two-day professional training aimed at mental health counselors, social workers, guidance professionals, school administrators and teachers to help educate about the unique challenges that National Guard and Reserve children and families face. Paul Callen, a retired Army officer, helped develop the program and was one of the trainers, along with De Murphy, at an institute that Need to Know attended earlier this summer in Bridgewater, Mass.

The National Guard and Reserve Institute is a program of the Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC), which was established in 1998 to help military-connected children with the challenges of frequent moves and transitions often experienced throughout childhood. In addition to professional development workshops, MCEC provides transition services for students, parent workshops and counseling resources to help military children and families.

What is Naviance?
Good question! Naviance is a college and career planning resource that SchoolQuest is offering to students as young as 8th grade. It is a valuable tool for students planning their educational path. While using Naviance a student can complete inventories that will help define their strengths and interests. They can then find courses of study that utilize those strengths and see what careers match up with those findings. Scholarship information is available as is college application information. Scholarship and college application can be stored for future reference.  Also available for students 9th - 12th grade, Method Test Prep!  ACT and SAT tests are challenging and SchoolQuest wants you to be prepared.  Practice for one or both of these tests on Naviance!

Eligibility Requirements:

How much does it cost?
Here's the best part, Naviance is being offered free of charge by SchoolQuest and the Military Child Education Coalition!

Why are we offering it?
Because, as always, the focus at SchoolQuest and the Military Child Education Coalition is to ensure quality educational opportunities for all military children affected by mobility, family separation and transition. Everything we do is "for the sake of the child".

How do I sign up?
First, come visit us as www.SchoolQuest.org.  After creating a SchoolQuest profile the Naviance eligible student(s) will be highlighted. Next, simply follow the on-screen instructions to send an activation email to the eligible student(s). Once the student clicks on this activation link they will be led to the specially designed Naviance program being offered by SchoolQuest.

- posted by Amy Soupene, the MCEC SchoolQuest Program Manager

Part of a pilot program started this school year, Register is the new military student transition consultant for the district. She helps military families PCSing to Fort Benning get everything they need to have their children enrolled in the right school.

That can mean explaining the details of the different magnet programs available or finding an appropriate placement for a special needs child, Register said.

“I am here to do whatever I can to help the military families transition to Columbus or transition out of Columbus,” she said. “If children are having any problems in school, I’m going to be working very closely with the counselors. When you say transition, it’s not just people who are new. We are transitioning through life … from elementary to middle, from middle to high, from high school to graduation. Life is transition.

Read more about the military student transition consultant joining the Muscogee County School District.

-Posted by Darlene Register, Military Student Transition Consultant (MSTC)