After 20 years of putting a uniform on every single day, you might think your family is ready to finally be free from military life. But, it’s a hard transition to make.

The JROTC program allows retirees to continue serving in uniform, but leave behind deployments, months’ long training and other trappings of traditional military service.

Retirees must have retired in grade as E-6 through E-9 or W- 1 through W-5 or O-3 through O-6.

While most people think of JROTC staff as teaching in the high school classroom, there are also opportunities to serve at the Brigade headquarters and as a department head.

In any case, your daily activities will be very different from what you lived in the military. Instructors, like other high school teachers, will be teaching a curriculum given to them by JROTC. Instructors also work weekends and evenings, guiding their cadets through PT, leadership training and competitions and marching with their cadets in parades.

As a member of the high school faculty, you will be required to be just that, a high school teacher. You will work in the bus line, the lunch room, chaperone events and rotate through any other duties that the faculty is require to do.

In addition, some states may require you to be certified as a teacher. The JROTC website has a great guide for each state that shows how much, or how little, certification you will need to join the high school staff as a military instructor.

And, being a high school teacher isn’t for the faint of heart. When my husband was interviewed for a JROTC job at a tough, inner-city school, the first thing the colonel there told him was, “these kids are rough. You will have to watch your back in the hallways.”

That was enough to steer my husband clear of that job offer. And six months later a student shot another student in the hallway. The first people on the scene to stop the attack were the JROTC instructors.

Still, JROTC is a chance to make a difference. In addition to the officer’s firm warning about the violence in the hallway, he also reminded my husband that in many cases, the JROTC instructors were the only ones who were steering these kids to a future where they would grow and succeed.

They were there, he said, to grow a better future for the nation.

Want to know more about becoming a JROTC instructor when you retire?

Visit http://www.usarmyjrotc.com/home/xtesting for all the details.