“We don’t expect them to [just] know how to do the
movements, we expect them teach the movements,”
Summerlin said. “That’s the difference. So the private ?rst
class and the sergeant all have the same standard. The end
result is that they are able to teach their subordinates in the
future how to do the movements correctly.”
Summerlin said he didn’t understand the need for PNCOC
at ?rst, but has changed his opinion since it kicked off a few
weeks ago.
“At ?rst I was a little skeptical, like ‘really we need to teach
soldiers how to march and stuff? I thought we were past
that,’” Summerlin said. “But it’s apparent these soldiers are
learning more.”
The feedback from the students and instructors has been
very positive, Wussow said.
“I’ve had some NCOs that have been in the military eight
or 10 years come up and we talk about it afterwards and
they say ‘I have never seen that before in my entire career,’”
Wussow said. “And that’s actually that ‘ah-ha’ moment you
want, not because they didn’t know something, but because
they learned something [new]. And anybody that is an
educator in any kind of aspect wants to see that.”
Wussow said the course will bene?t the JRD soldiers in two
ways.
“One is we’re going to have a good collective group of
individuals when we get back [to Fort Bragg],” Wussow
said. “Second thing is, if someone else goes to another unit,
they’re well represented in their [job].”
Summerlin said the Army is in transition right now and this
course helps bridge that gap.
“I think what we’ve noticed is that since we’ve been an
Army at war for so long, we’ve focused more on combat
warrior drills and not the basic standards and it shows
because people’s uniforms and their basic discipline levels
have been lowered,” Summerlin said. “So the standard of the
soldier needs to increase if we’re going to keep people from
getting cut out. The future of our Army depends on doing
things right.”
Understanding the course and why they are taking it back to
the basics is understood not just by the senior NCOs, but by
the junior enlisted as well.
“When we do become NCOs and we have fresh privates, we
can explain what they’re doing and not only what they’re
doing but why and be able to explain it in detail so that
anyone can understand it,” said U.S. Army Pfc. Patrick
White, a JRD-E soldier from Hawkinsville, Ga.
White explained that the weekend classes are broken down
into two parts, class day on Saturdays and tests reviewing the
previous weekend’s lesson on Friday. The week in between
class and test days allows soldiers to practice what they’ve
learned.
“My biggest thing is breaking it down step-by-step and
trying to explain it,” White said. “I usually have problems
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