Before becoming a teacher,  Math Teacher Julien Milcent was in the Peace Corp; Math Teacher John Madura was in the United States Navy, and Technology Teacher Ted Enoch also served in the Army Reserves.

Math Teacher Julien Milcent was in the Peace Corps before he started teaching. Mr. Milcent got his teaching degree and taught for half a year before he left for the Peace Corp. He went to Indonesia. His job was to teach English as a foreign language to help the kids and their teachers who taught English. Mr. Milcent was there for two years with his wife. Mr. Milcent believes that Peace Corps helped with his success as a teacher because his experience taught him to set more realistic expectations and understand the need to be more flexible.

An interesting part of his experience in Indonesia was the culture and the people’s looseness around time. He explained that some classes might start at seven, but there isn’t a bell that rings at seven, the duration of a class may be an hour, but it might be a half-hour.

Mr. Milcent had excellent teachers in high school, specifically two teachers, one being his geometry teacher. His teacher made him recognize how fun geometry could be. His choir teacher was super engaging. Both teachers left such a big impact on his life that he wanted to be able to offer that to others as well. Mr. Milcent said if he wasn’t a teacher,  he would have studied science and done something in the medical profession. Mr. Milcent does recommend joining the peace corp because he thinks it’s a unique opportunity. He said it’s a nice gap between college and finding a real job. 

Math Teacher John Madura was in the Navy before becoming a math teacher. It was Mr. Madura’s plan to become a teacher when he came out of the armed services. He went into the military after 9/11. He didn’t think too much about careers after he served. When he was done serving, he started applying for his teaching certification. Also, the Armed Services gave him money which he put towards getting his teaching degree.

Mr. Madura served for five years in the National Security Agency. The agency does intelligence work, code-breaking. Serving in the Navy provided him with many opportunities. One interesting part of his experience is meeting new people from different areas as well as meeting new people from the South, and seeing the world, and he found it fascinating to apply math in a real-world setting. 

Mr. Madura thinks the service helped him with the success of being a teacher. He stated that the careers are interconnected because he got to use real-world math. He said students do the math to do the math, but he is trying to teach his students how to deal with real-world math.

Technology teacher Ted Enoch was in the armed services. Mr. Enoch had a teacher in high school who inspired him to become an “Industrial Teacher”. Mr. Enoch met his first girlfriend in college, and she was a German Exchange student. After he graduated, he moved to Germany with her and got a teaching job with the Department Of Defense Dependent school system. These schools are all around the world for children of the Military. Mr. Enoch was there for three

years before he decided to return to the U.S. He joined the Army Reserve and spent about a year doing his training before he was commissioned a lieutenant in the engineers. Mr. Enoch was in the Armed Services for twenty-one years. He retired in 2008. He spent six months in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While he was there, he helped run refugee camps for 40,000 Cubans who eventually immigrated to the U.S. His other major deployment was in Baghdad, Iraq. He was there for one year and worked as a liaison between the army and Iraq civilians. He did a lot of work contracting and supervising construction of public work projects. His team and he distributed humanitarian relief, food and water to the local poor and as many other people as possible to make the locals’ lives better.

Mr. Enoch recommends joining in the service to his students. It’s a huge help to pay for college. Servicemen also acquire skills from training. Many of the skills servicemen learn are useful in the workplace. It is also a great opportunity to see places in the world. Risk is involved, but there are many important jobs that do not involve combat war.