Middle school students interviewing veterans

Shawano Community Middle School students will be taking a different route to honor veterans this year.

The coronavirus pandemic has closed the Shawano school to most public traffic, so the annual Veterans Day assembly it normally holds had to be canceled. In its place, SCMS students will be interviewing local veterans and posting videos of the interviews online.

“The goal is to meet with veterans and hear their stories,” said Rod Watson, SCMS associate principal. “We’ve identified 10 local veterans who would be interested in telling their stories, and we have 10 corresponding students who will interview them.”

Watson said the plan is to bring the veterans to the school to sit at the computers and talk with the students, who are operating from home while Shawano’s public schools are in an all-virtual learning mode through November. The interviews will be set up in an online presentation where visitors can choose which interviews they want to watch, he said.

“They’re going to be about 10-15 minutes in length, because that’s about the middle school attention span,” Watson said. “The veterans come from all the branches and eras in our community.”

Having the students learn for themselves about what veterans sacrifice for the country’s prosperity and freedom is an important lesson, in Watson’s view, and something that goes beyond what they learn in textbooks.

“I think it’s crucial,” Watson said. “We all serve in some ways, and we don’t get to continue the society and the life that we’re used to unless some people are willing to step up and play their role. On Veterans Day, we recognize that as the men and women in uniform, but of course, we have teachers and nurses and cops that are serving the community every day, and I think that when students are able to meet with veterans, they can picture themselves and figure out how they’re going to give back to their community.”

Doing the interviews will also demystify the perceptions of veterans to those young students, Watson said, who at this point have a view of veterans painted by video games and movies.

“The dramatic parts are there, but not the more mundane, realistic parts,” Watson said. “Talking to a veteran, they can start to understand the experience a little better what it means to be a soldier and what they give up for their country.”

Watson noted that nine of the 10 students he talked with to do the veteran interviews had not even heard of Vietnam.

“Why would they have? They’re 12 years old,” Watson said. “I’m trying to caution them about the uncomfortable topics surrounding the Vietnam conflict and how you broach that as an interviewer.”

The veterans to be interviewed range from one in his 20s to those who served in Vietnam. Watson noted that he hopes to find someone who served during the Korean War, as well, to show how military service has spanned the decades.

Some of the questions to be asked include what specific jobs they did in the military, what prompted them to serve, what role models they looked up to in the military and what helped them get through the tough times.

Even though the veterans project is in lieu of the middle school’s annual celebration, Watson is considering having both programs thrive in future years. He noted the school had been considering a reboot of its assembly program, which he said was getting too “passive,” even before the pandemic upended all the schools’ plans. One possibility is to show the video interviews during the assembly, where there would be a known audience to watch and learn.

“We have many veterans in the community that could be interviewed that were not part of this,” Watson said. “There’s certainly room to do this again and differently.”

Watson said the video interviews can be seen at a later date at the Herbert E. McLaughlin VFW Post 2723’s Facebook page.

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com