Brotherhood, an oft-used word at Saint Thomas Academy, has special meaning for Matthew Silsley, now in his first full year as a Military Leadership teacher and as a moderator for the Ranger Team. If not for his brother, Silsley might never have joined the Marine Corps, which put him on his path to Mendota Heights.

“I was a plumber,” Silsley recalled. “And one day my brother had to face a judge who told him he should join the armed forces or end up in jail. So, we both joined the Corps.” Silsley served 20 years, including a deployment in Iraq in 2005, where he experienced combat and crossed paths with his brother, a Purple Heart recipient.

Silsley’s career also included a stint as an MP in Japan, service as a platoon sergeant and team lead for General Dunford’s personal security detail in Afghanistan, and time at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center – 29 Palms, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, and Marine Corps Base Quantico.

There, he specialized in explosive breaching, “learning how to use just the precise amount of explosives to get into a building, for example, so that we could mitigate casualties to the fullest extent.” That turned out to be his favorite Marine Corps experience, he said. “I was an E5 Sergeant and surrounded by master gunners, who took me under their wings. They had so much more life experience than I did. They taught me to think outside the box, and they taught me to be a better person.”

He credits those mentors for teaching him patience, “which helps with my own kids,” 10-year-old Sophie and 7-year-old Jae, born to him and his wife, Kim, whom he met in the Corps. One other significant stop was Fort Snelling, where he worked with Master Gunnery Sergeant Neil Constine, a brother of sorts, who helped Silsley gain an internship at the Academy and eventually get hired to his current position.

Silsley draws on his wide-ranging Marine Corps background in teaching his Cadets, including his time in combat. “By experiencing those stressful situations, I can relate to how the Cadets face stressful situations,” he said. “I teach them how to utilize their resources and the brotherhood to keep their teams going, because I had to rely on my team so hard.”

His classroom demeanor is “firm and fair,” he said. “I keep a straight face, but I do joke around. I speak to them in a respectful way, so they learn that they need to speak to me in a respectful way.”

Silsley has been impressed with his Cadets, noting, “This is the first place I’ve ever been where kids say how cool it is to keep a 4.0 grade point average. In the public school I went to, we didn’t think it was ‘cool’ to get good grades. The majority of students want to be here. They care for each other, and their parents do a good job of teaching them values.”

An example of Silsley’s teaching acumen in action stems from the revised Military Leadership format, where senior-rank Cadet leaders review and counsel their squad members. Review forms distributed in advance of that exercise asked questions about how the Military Leadership instructors could do a better job, Silsley said.

“I told the students to go all out in their answers. One kid said that we were all about punishment and giving de-merits, and I told the whole class, that we’re here to teach life lessons that they could apply here and in the outside world. I could see on their faces that they were believing in that, and I told them, ‘We’re not here to tell you you’re bad people. We’re just trying to teach you accountability.’ One of these kids is so wicked smart, but he’d been getting a lot of de-merits, but I saw the lightbulb go off over his head, and now he sees what we’re doing as assignments just like in any other class.”

Such a rewarding experience working on the brotherhood at the Academy has Silsley feeling “super-blessed to be here,” he said. “I thank Kelby Woodard, Master Guns, and Colonel Hetherington for the opportunity to give back to these boys to help them become men of exemplary character.”