Who will be your cadets

Who(will be your cadets)?

Time to define “Cadet�?

school and throughout high school.

Typically the program is offered to young people in middle school. Students are referred to as cadets while in the program and are expected the meet a well defined standard for conduct while in JPA.

Another strategy is to enroll both high school and middle school students (only really feasible in a summer camp setting) allowing the older cadets to be a positive role model to the younger cadets.

Who will be your cadets?

Give Me a Number

The decision of which grade you will target is an important one. JPA has been successfully offered in both high school and middle school settings.

One strategy is to offer the program to students during their first year on a middle school campus so they can more quickly become mentors and student leaders through the remainder of middle

You will also need to consider the number of cadets each academy will accommodate. Typically somewhere between twenty and thirty is a good working number, consistent with the average size of a classroom.

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The number of instructors you will need is determined by considering total number of cadets and factoring in the frequency and duration of your academy.

An academy offered over the course of a semester, meeting for one hour, three times a week will be significantly easier to manage with a single officer than a weeklong summer camp that meets for seven hours a day.

As an instructor, you will be out numbered.

But in the spirit of “One Ranger, One Riot” there’s no reason to think you will not be able to manage the situation.

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Word of Mouth will Help in Year 2 Depending on the type of program you offer, the recruitment of cadets may or may not be a pivotal issue.

This year, at Murchison Middle School in Austin, Texas for instance, the program had more than 400 applicants to fill the thirty available openings for next semester.

Typically the process of enrollment becomes easier as the program becomes more established. But that first year can be challenging.