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The few. The proud. The high school principal?

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

Charles City High School Principal Josh Johnson is going to experience a week of Marine Corps Boot Camp.

The event is part of the U.S.  Educators Workshop, which is held about 12 times a year and gives teachers and others a chance to experience life as a Marine Corps recruit.

He’ll be leaving the morning of Monday, Feb. 19, to head to San Diego, where he’ll get his first glimpse of Marine recruit training when he gets off the plane.

The Marine Recruit Depot for San Diego is right next to the airport. From there he’ll travel to Camp Pendleton.

Two years ago a Marine recruiter at Charles City schools approached Johnson about attending the program.

“A colleague of mine had gone through it early in my teaching career,” Johnson said. The colleague had given overwhelmingly positive feedback about his experience.

“I’d love to be on the list to do that,” Johnson said. He was nominated and selected right away, but “We had a young son of 2 months and didn’t feel like it was a good time to leave for my family.”

The recruiter renominated Johnson and he was selected again to go in 2018.

While in San Diego, Johnson will learn about the history of the U.S. Marine Corps and go through a shortened version of the usual three-month-long endurance trial.

“Then they tie in the education side of it, how we can bring back those strategies,” Johnson said. “I am really interested in the building of culture and how we do that in different organizations and institutions, because it’s such a big focus in what we’re doing here in the last year.”

He’ll be there with 70 to 80 other educators from around the country, which is similar in size to a standard recruit platoon.

“You learn by doing,” Johnson said. “Then they sit down with you afterward and you reflect on what you learned, how you learned it, why you were you successful, why weren’t you successful.”

“One of things I’m really anxious to hear about is how they have evolved over time,” Johnson said.

One of the main motos of the Marine Corps is “adapt and overcome.”

“That’s another microcosm of the school district and how you work with students and staff members,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he isn’t going to the workshop physically unprepared.

He and several other employees in Charles City Schools have been exercising as part of the Catch Life Campaign.

For the last two weeks, Johnson and others have competed against other Iowa school districts to see who can be the most physically fit.

‘We have certain goals to reach, and we’re off to a really good start,” Johnson said.

That program has hopefully helped Johnson prepare for the coming Marine trials, he said.

“Anytime that you can spend extended periods of time with like-minded educators, that just improves our practice so much,” Johnson said. “So I know that the other people that are involved — I’m going to learn a lot from them. I know I’m going to learn a lot from the Marine Corps.

“I’m excited about learning anything I can about strengthening the culture that we have here,” Johnson said.

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