Shortly before Sept. 11, 2001, Tim Blatter, a teacher of 14 years, was helping out on the sidelines of a Mountain View football game when another teacher suggested he join the National Guard.

The teacher said he had been a Guard member for 12 years and had never been deployed.

Liking what he heard, Blatter joined.

That teacher is now in Iraq.

"He always tells me, 'Oh, sorry.' " Blatter said.

In 2003, Blatter's unit was sent to Afghanistan, where he spent a year doing radio communications, intelligence and flight planning for helicopters.

His unit got bombed so often that he got used to it, Blatter said.

"You just kind of start, 'Oh, they're bombing again.' " he said.

Once a rocket landed about 300 yards from his living quarters and a soldier was injured.

"It was kind of spooky," he said.

Because of his experiences in Afghanistan, he doesn't take things for granted anymore, Blatter said -- and he teaches differently in the classroom now.

"I don't think we realize how blessed we are, and I try to tell kids that," Blatter said. "They just take school for granted. It's like they hate to come to school. They don't like education. But you see people over there that would literally almost die to get educated."

Blatter came home in April and is now teaching summer classes to help students make up credits, he said. In the fall he will become Mountain View High School's new guidance counselor.

"I'll miss the classroom. I can already tell," he said.

His teaching and coaching experience helped him while he was in the Middle East, Blatter said. Some of his fellow soldiers were about the same age as the kids he worked with as a teacher.

"I was in charge of five or six soldiers," Blatter said. "I thought that often it was very similar to teaching in many aspects, because they were very immature. It was a challenge."

His training in counseling helped, too, when soldiers had struggles.

"I found out I wasn't the traditional Army guy," he said. "I was a little more counselor, touchy-feely. And that seemed to touch a lot of my soldiers, instead of being a hard case."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.