Educators head to Marine boot camp

the United States Marines recently hosted a week-long educators workshop and invited Texas teachers to get a hands-on look at their basic training it was to help them guide their students who may be interested in the US military kxan's chris sadeghi was also invited and chronicled the making of a Marine including some of our local recruits this is part one of a three-part series that starts from the moment a recruit arrives in San Diego we came out here with a group of Central Texas teachers to spend a week in San Diego not here on the beach but with the Marines the purpose to see the process that turns a student into one of the few and the proud if you're going to learn something nothing beats doing it we along with these teachers ask alum marinas made here is what we were told one is on to these yellow footprints the place we lost most our vocabulary on the footprints in listening get it and once inside the volume was still high fortunately for the teachers though they got to skip the next step from there they'll come back around here and they'll get their haircuts shave their heads so they all look the same any individuality that stepped on the footprints is gone by the time you step off and we hadn't even met Staff Sergeant Harris yet welcome home perfectly made beds neatly folded towels and a new man of the house I'm here to push on I'm here to make sure they stay in the fighting and whatever I need to do to get in there I'll get a message but somewhere in that fight a life changes from Austin Texas we caught up with local recruit Anthony Maldonado like I said on the road to nowhere is hanging around with the wrong people as soon as I got on those yellow footprints it changed all the screaming and yelling we just showed you scared Anthony hi sir I didn't want to be here it's very rough too like it but the words that nearly broke him were from a familiar voice as soon as I said hello my mom's goes hey mijo and immediately I just I started crying it was one of only two calls that Maldonado has made home to his family in del Valle a marine taught less than about value and about love whenever crew gets a letter it's like it's like gold they treasure it like so much with that treasure pushing him Anthony held on graduated two weeks after this interview the Marine Corps is the best thing that's ever happened to me it's a way alive and I can't go wrong with it thanks to one set of footprints Anthony is ready to make his own from San Diego chris sadeghi cakes and news congratulations Anthony well here's a look at what it takes to become a Marine you must be between the ages of 17 to 28 be a legal resident of the US but US citizenship not required recruits must be a high school graduate and go through 63 days of recruit training there were one of 15,000 276 two new Marines in 2012 and in part two of this series Chris sobbing he gets a taste of the training that recruits are put through physical demands that can turn average teenagers into combat warriors you can also check out more of Chris's experiences at the recruit depot on our website kxan.com

Channel: kxan

Views: 1,081,096

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Keywords: kxanaustin, kxanaustinnews

Id: slO1R-8FpmE

Length: 3min 59sec (239 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2013