Why an Army colonel is retiring early — to become a high school teacher

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.

Personal Post

(ChildYouth and School Services/U.S. Army/CHILD, YOUTH AND SCHOOL SERVICES/U.S. ARMY) - Paul Yingling, coaching a baseball team in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, celebrates with players after his team scored a winning run in May 2010.

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.

paul.yingling@marshallcenter.org

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.

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