Veterans at Valencia College bond together in class just for them

Easing the Transition to College Life: Vets Bond Together in Speech Class
Thursday, November 10, 2011

By Linda Shrieves Beaty
After serving in a war zone, worrying about insurgents and roadside bombs, it’s sometimes hard to fit in at college, where many of your classmates are more concerned about the latest cell phones or what’s on Facebook.

But for a handful of veterans at Valencia College, there’s one place where they feel at home a speech class that is open only to veterans. It’s designed to help veterans overcome their fear of public speaking - and, at the same time, help ease the transition from the military to college life.

“It’s nice to be in a class with people who understand me,” says Ashley Powell, a former Marine whose job included handling the paperwork for Marines who were killed in action. Now married to a fellow Marine, she finds camaraderie in the speech class that she hasn’t found in others.

The class is the brainchild of Valencia speech professor John Creighton, a former veteran. Because speech is a required entry level course at Valencia, everyone has to take it — including returning vets. But Creighton noticed that when veterans stood up to speak about their experiences, the poignant or difficult experiences that they described often went right over the heads of most of their classmates.

“The idea for the class came from one student who had served two tours in Iraq,” Creighton said. “He started speaking about his experiences and I could see in his eyes that he was reliving it -- but I looked around the class and they didn’t get it.”
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Speech Class for Veterans Only