Elizabeth: So now as a college professor, your own students being veterans or whatnot, what do you think is the biggest challenge in teaching veterans and addressing them in the classroom.
Phil: {Big sigh} Veterans are like any other group. They are extremely diverse, so generalizations are a little bit [pause] pernicious. Right? To generalize completely is to combine things that aren’t the same. So I’ve had a range of experiences. Some men and women are completely shut down about their experiences, won’t even tell you that they are vets. And you won’t find out until they are leaving the class because they don’t want to be shamed by their peers or whatever. They just want to get their degree and get the hell out. On the other hand, there are those who know that I am the chair of the task force in veteran affairs at the college, I have this history, and will be forthcoming with me and I have absolutely turned into an informal kind of therapist on more than one occasion with these men. (Two cases were from men).
All of the veterans that come to my classroom bring with them the experiences that they have gathered, of course, that’s natural and obvious. For some, that is mind-expanding, it’s opening, it’s a broadening kind of a thing, it allows them to see the world and perhaps in ways they may not have been able to do 2 to 5 years ago. For others, it just hasn’t been that impact, in fact, it may have strengthened prejudices and attitudes that they entered the service with. So to repeat myself, generalizations are a bit hard except that the challenges to meet the student where they are, to the extent they allow you to do that. [end]
