As the school year came to a conclusion, so did the teaching career of Portage High School MCJROTC Senior Marine Instructor John Johnston. Johnston led Portage High School’s ROTC program to new heights over his 17 years of teaching at Portage.
Running the program were Major Johnston and Master Sergeant Edwin Bowers. Johnston said this program is all about building character, leadership, service to the community and citizenship.
“To me, it [the ROTC Program] means a chance to help build the great leaders of tomorrow, a chance to community mindedness in these teenagers, a chance to develop kids into young adults, and to pass on a lot of things that I’ve learned in my own life to help them be successful,” Johnston said.
Johnston says that what makes Portage’s ROTC program excel and stand out from others is that it has an edge, it is a program where one has to work extremely hard and it is a much more difficult academically than most people think. Each student is dedicated to their duties of community service and their duties of the program.
The ROTC program has an annual awards night where different medals and scholarships are given out for scholarship, leadership and community service. At this year’s awards night, 30 medals and 20 scholarships were given to well deserving students.
The program holds close to three core values honor, courage and commitment. These three values help students to always do what is right and never give up no matter how difficult a situation may be.
“These past three years I have learned how to be a good leader. My freshman year and my sophomore year they [staff cadets] taught us basic leadership traits and principles. My junior year I was a squad leader and I actually was able to use everything I was taught about being a leader but these lessons helped me in other parts of my life,” ROTC member Desire Rodriguez said.
This year, Portage’s program was given the title of the top JROTC program in the Midwest. That title is determined by how much community service the program provides, how well the program does at drill and marksmanship competition as well as how well the fitness scores and uniform inspection scores are.
“My experience here has been good and bad at times. But mostly it has been very, very fulfilling,” Johnston said. “To those of you who have never joined the program, never judge a book by its cover. If you want to be involved in something that will make you feel good at the end of the day; this is the program to be in.”
To read more about Major John Johnston, click here!