Local Marine shares experiences with students

When Reach Cyber Charter School, a free online Pennsylvania public school for students in kindergarten through grade 12, held its annual observance of Military Week, students were able to hear from actual veterans about their experiences.

Among the presenters was Noah Ream of Morgantown, who served with the United States Marine Corps. Ream is now on Reserve duty with the Marines while teaching fifth-grade math at the charter school.

Military Week was observed from Nov. 4 to 15, and Noah shared his experiences in the military with elementary and middle school students in a special educational presentation on Nov. 6.

When speaking about his career, Noah shared that he knew he wanted to take after his father and join the U.S. Marines. He joined in 2005 and served on active duty in Afghanistan, where he led his group as a machine gun section sergeant.

In his presentations, Noah tells students about when he was injured during his second deployment in Afghanistan in 2010 while he was on foot patrol. He credits God with sparing his life. "I walked around a bend in the road, and an IED went off and blew me into a ditch. Nothing major was wrong. I had a concussion and cuts and bruises," he said. "It was my very last patrol."

Noah credits his decision to become a teacher to the joy he felt when he met young children in Afghanistan while on active duty. He recalled the first time he spoke to students about his military career. "One of my buddies from high school was a teacher, and he asked me to come in and talk to kids in the fifth- and sixth-grade class about Afghanistan, and I loved it. I loved talking to them," he said, adding that his mother was a teacher, as well. "You get some goofy questions but some interesting ones as well."

He said one of the most popular questions that students ask is what people eat in the military. "I tell them when we are on base or the barracks you get regular food, but when you are deployed or out in the field training, we have MREs (Meals, Ready-to-Eat). It's a meal in a bag."

Noah always encourages the students to talk to family members or people who have served in the military. "(I tell the students) when you see a veteran, listen to their stories," he stated. "Instead of reading about it in a book, you are talking to a real person and hearing first hand accounts."

He said that servicemen and servicewomen also appreciate receiving letters and packages while deployed. He recalled receiving a box of letters and later meeting the teacher who had her class write them. "I got a box of letters from a school in my hometown in Somerset County and kept one," he said. "When I got home and was in my final year of college, I was doing my student-teaching at the same school where I got the letters from. I (showed the teacher) the letter that had been sent years prior from the same (classroom). I got to meet some of the actual students (who sent the letters)."

"The letter went from that school, (traveled) thousands of miles to Afghanistan and back to the school," he added. "This was God's way of telling me this is where I need to be."

Noah's wife, Caitlin Keith Ream, is also a teacher at the charter school and is a graduate of Twin Valley High School. Noah is from Somerset County, while Caitlin is local, but the two actually met in Alaska.

"After college, I went to Alaska to teach for a year, and that's where I met my wife," Noah recalled. "She heard about the opportunity to teach in Alaska. We were in different villages in Alaska, and the only way to get in and out was on a Piper plane. She had been up there for a couple of years, and I showed up at an in-service event where all the teachers flew into King Salmon."

The couple eventually returned to Pennsylvania, and they later married and now have three sons.

In addition to Noah's presentation, Military Week included a series of virtual presentations where a recruiter from each branch of the military - the Marines, the Army and Reserves, the Air Force and Space Force, the Navy and Coast Guard, Civil Air Patrol and Sea Cadets - were included. The goal of the programs was to educate students about the many different opportunities within each branch and the recruitment processes and to hear the speakers' personal stories and advice.

Noah's presentation will be posted on the Reach Cyber Charter School's YouTube channel. To learn more about the school, visit http://www.reachcyber.org.