The Army's new physical fitness program is the foundation for a program recruiters from the Chicago Battalion's 47th Street Station used to gain periodic access to a hard to penetrate public high school.
Even though Bronzeville Military Academy employs a military structure in a disciplined environment where students concentrate on academic achievement and individual responsibility, the school's doors had been closed to all military recruiters last June due to an impropriety involving a recruiter from another service.
In addition, said Station Commander Sgt. 1st Class Deven Williams, the parents there aren't necessarily interested in having their children enlist. They want the structure and discipline the military academy offers but also want their children to go to college.
Williams said they cracked opened the door by offering to teach an alternative to gym class at the school.
"We approached the faculty using the physical fitness angle to promote healthy living in light of statistics showing that 13 million American children are obese," Williams said. "This was our way to interact with the students, allow them to have some fun and simultaneously promote the Army."
The program is based off of the Army's new physical fitness program of the Physical Readiness Training's (PRT) secondary goal, which instills confidence and the will to win as well as develops teamwork and unit cohesion.
The anchor of the program is an obstacle course where students perform push-ups and sit-ups and sprint between the various stations. The stations include the basketball toss and football toss where students are given three attempts to complete the task. Point values are assigned to overall speed and proficiency at the various stations and an overall winner is determined for each class.
Despite the approach, which fits well with the academy's military and disciplined structure, school administrators were still leery but gave recruiters a chance to prove themselves.
The program turned out to be a major success and a real coup for his station.
"The attitude of the staff has completely turned around for the better," Williams said. "We started with the freshmen and through their positive response to the program the facility asked us to return three more times to conduct it for the sophomores, juniors and seniors. Many faculty members even participated in the program along with the students."
Subsequently, because of the rapport that was established by the event, recruiters have been invited to participate in upcoming school sponsored events.
"With this event we were able to overcome that obstacle and find a happy median that worked for all parties involved," said Williams. "Ultimately, creativity and out of the box thinking allowed us to mitigate an issue and help students at the same time. Consequently, we've enlisted two seniors as a result."
The key to the success of the program is in the advanced planning and your presentation to the school, said Williams.
"Begin by outlining your intent and use visual aids when making your presentation. Make it look as professional as possible and present it with a positive attitude, heavily emphasizing to the schools the Army's message on combating obesity and promoting a healthy lifestyle."
So you've got the plan and the assets, now how do you sell it to the schools who've heard it all before? Williams says to allay the fear the schools have at the event being purely recruiting, suggest offering the program to the freshmen class.
"Use positive student impact to influence the faculty to offer the program to other classes. Draw on the momentum of the program by utilizing the battalion's dog-tag machine and H3, take lots of pictures and post them on facebook and make formal award presentations to the winners."
Most importantly, said Williams, follow-up with all leads because -- bottom line -- that's the mission.
Williams plans to build on the success at Bronzeville by marketing the program to other schools within the station's footprint.
But already, the word has spread to other Military Academies with Air Force Academy High School requesting the same event be conducted on their campus in May for 80 cadets.
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