FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. – “Always walk into a room knowing that everyone in there knows something you don’t.” “Respect is earned, and trust is built.” “Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.” “When a team fails, the leader has failed.”
This is some of the advice given to students from Buena High School on Thursday, as they spent the day at Fort Huachuca learning about leadership.
The eight students were all 11th graders from the BHS student council. They started their day with a briefing from Col. John Ives, garrison commander, and then they divided into small groups and partnered with Soldier mentors to share stories and wisdom.
According to Staff Sgt. Jenna Bobert, the idea was the brainchild of the garrison commander. While the Fort already conducts “A Day in the Life” recruiting initiative, Ives wanted to do more to mentor the students, and gave Bobert free rein to come up with a program.
The “Day in the Life” program exposes students to different jobs in the military, and shows them some of their options, if they decided to enlist. The leadership day, however, is meant to be something different than that, she explained.
“We thought about, how can we connect the students, where we have a one-to-one mentorship, show them that the Army isn’t all about blazing guns and obstacle courses,” Bobert said.
However, Bobert stressed multiple times throughout the day that this was not a recruiting drive, and that the Soldiers were not trying to convince the students to join the military. Instead, she said, “this is definitely a leader mentorship event. Our goal here is to show them our leadership skills, and how we developed them, and how they can use [the skills] in their everyday life.”
Student Amelia Connor said she appreciated getting to know the mentors.
“Sometimes people will try to give you advice, but you don’t know where they’re coming from,” Connor said. “But you guys told your stories and told how you learned things and how you got to your role and your rank.”
Addison Hogan agreed.
“I had some really good conversations with my mentor,” Hogan said. “She had some really good advice.”
After lunch, the students were taken to the Emergency Operations Center where they participated in an emergency exercise scenario. Each student was given a role, and they had to act out what their individual responsibilities, decisions and actions would be within the scenario. This forced the students to think like a leader, and act upon information they received. This proved to be the favorite part for some of the students.
“The scenario really made me think,” said Hogan, who was tasked to play the legal representative.
Connor, who acted as the emergency services representative, laughingly said her favorite part of the exercise was “using the walkie talkie.”
Charlie-Ray Price, who admits that he is interested in joining the military, said the exercise was eye-opening, but that he most enjoyed spending the morning with his mentors, who were all drill sergeants.
“It was interesting to hear their stories,” he said. But then he admitted that one of his favorite parts was when his group donned the famous drill sergeant hats, “and we got to walk around and make [the drill sergeants] do pushups.”
Sounds like he is learning important leadership skills already.
(Editor's note: The complete photo album is available at BHS students learn about Leadership | Flickr.)
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Fort Huachuca is home to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command/9th Army Signal Command and more than 48 supported tenants representing a diverse, multiservice population. Our unique environment encompasses 946 square miles of restricted airspace and 2,500 square miles of protected electronic ranges, key components to the national defense mission.
Located in Cochise County, in southeast Arizona, about 15 miles north of the border with Mexico, Fort Huachuca is an Army installation with a rich frontier history. Established in 1877, the Fort was declared a national landmark in 1976.
We are the Army’s Home. Learn more at https://home.army.mil/huachuca/.
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