MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- When a service member is given orders to another duty station, it does not only affect them but also affects their family.
Children of service members have to move into a new house, make new friends and start classes in a new school.
There are numerous reasons why moving can be stressful for a family but education does not have to be one of them, according to the Student Online Achievement Resources pamphlet.
The Department of Defense has paid for an online program for students from third grade to their senior year of high school. Both military families and non-military families can use SOAR, free of charge, according to the SOAR pamphlet.
“SOAR is customized to tutor your child in subjects they are not so familiar with,” said Rose Ingersoll, school liaison, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
This program also helps military kids who are moving from one military installation to the next. SOAR can help your child learn the curriculum of that state or even county, she said.
The transition of changing the curriculum for the child is easy. The parent only has to go online and change the state on which the student is currently living in to the state the child will soon be residing in. This will allow the child to learn the curriculum of that particular state, she added.
The best part of this program is that the assessments available online are aligned with each individual state and school district. This allows students who are moving, to get up to speed with their future classmates before they even move, said Jamie Jamison, consultant, Princeton Review.
SOAR provides skill tutoring for math, reading and language arts. The program helps the students with educational videos, exercises and questionnaires, she said.
Not only is the program beneficial to the students, but allows the parents to see where their child’s weak points are. The parent can log on to the Web site and review the work their child has completed, she said.
Parents who are deployed can also monitor their child’s progress because it is available online, stated SOAR pamphlet.
Military families who have worried about whether or not their child will have trouble in their new classroom due to the recent move. Now parents will not have to worry about that because of the hard work of a dedicated staff of educators, who want to help military family member’s students with the transition from one military installation to the next.
For more information, or to register your child, visit www.soarathome.org.