We're With Stephanie: A Military Spouse and Volunteer Who Connects the Classroom and the Community in South Korea

By Trey Smith

At Osan Air Base, South Korea, Stephanie Horn can be found in two familiar roles: teacher and USO volunteer. Sometimes, the two look surprisingly similar.

Her students know her as “Mrs. Horn,” while military parents arriving at the USO know her as the friendly-faced volunteer who can point them toward a school, a shuttle, a resource — or simply a place to sit down and catch their breath. As another school year begins, Stephanie finds herself moving between those two worlds once again, helping military children settle into the classroom while helping military families settle into life in South Korea through the support of the USO.

As a welcoming face at the USO, Stephanie helps military families find their way in South Korea. As a new school year begins, she continues to support military children in the classroom while helping families feel a little more at home. | Photo credit Courtesy Photo

The full-time teacher, mother and military spouse spent nine years in Oklahoma and another two years in Virginia before her family arrived in South Korea for her husband’s first overseas assignment. Finding community in a new home didn’t happen right away, and Stephanie had considered volunteering with the USO during their past duty stations, but the time commitments and locations made it difficult to make it work.

Then, in the summer of 2025, a friend named Sunny encouraged her to give volunteering with the USO a try. Sunny’s invitation gave Stephanie a reason to walk through the USO’s doors, and the friendships she found there gave her a reason to keep coming back.

“I always tell Sunny, because she’d been trying to recruit me to volunteer since I got to Korea two and a half years ago, [that] I should have listened the first time because everything fixed itself. I found what I needed at the USO.”

For Stephanie, that meant having somewhere to go after a long day at school — a place where she could connect with people, build friendships and be part of something outside her usual routines as a teacher and mom.

“When it’s a rough day at school, afterwards I go to the USO and I have a space where I can just be myself and hang out with all the people that I enjoy hanging out with,” Stephanie shared.

Before long, the people she met at the USO had become part of her life well beyond her volunteer hours, with friendships that extended to hikes, holidays and time with each other’s families.

At Osan, Stephanie’s roles as a USO volunteer and educator often bring her face-to-face with the same families. From welcoming them at the USO to supporting their children in the classroom, she provides a familiar connection as they adjust to life in South Korea. | Photo credit Courtesy Photo

“We’re there for each other. We protect each other, and we help each other. We’re a family, and we take care of each other,” Stephanie said. “If somebody called me and said, ‘I need somewhere to sleep,’ I wouldn’t hesitate to help. I might have to move my kids’ toys to put the guest bed down, but we’d make it work.”

As part of the military community at Osan, Stephanie’s two roles often bring her into contact with the same families from different sides of their lives. During the summer, she may be the volunteer welcoming a newly-arrived family through the USO doors. A few weeks later, she may see their children walking through the school hallways.

That familiarity can be especially valuable at a smaller base like Osan, where families may have fewer resources or activities to turn to as they settle into life in South Korea. For Stephanie, the connection between the USO and the classroom gives her a unique perspective on what that transition looks like — both for parents and their children.

A new classroom is only one part of adjusting to a new duty station. Deployments, training exercises and time away from parents can affect students’ daily lives. In Stephanie’s classroom, those challenges can show up in unexpected ways. Students sometimes carry the weight of everything happening around them into the school day. For some military children, what they need most is a place where they feel safe enough to let it out.

“Families aren’t home as much, and that definitely affects the kids a lot,” Stephanie said. “So many kids [cried] yesterday. But it was really because they feel safe with me and they had to get those emotions out.”

That trust follows Stephanie outside the classroom. At Liberty Fest, a local event on-base celebrating the Fourth of July, students repeatedly sought her out at the USO booth, asking where to find water or other resources. To them, the distinction between Mrs. Horn the teacher and Stephanie the USO volunteer didn’t seem to matter. She was simply someone they knew could help.

“My students knew me as a resource, both as a teacher and at the USO. They kept coming back to the USO booth saying, ‘Hey, Ms. Horn, where’s this? Where can I find water?’ It was great being able to be that resource for them.”

Military life can ask a lot of children, but Stephanie has also seen how those experiences can shape them in positive ways. Moving between communities, meeting people from different backgrounds and adapting to new surroundings have given her own children a broader view of the world — one that she hopes they carry with them long after they leave South Korea.

Through moves, new communities and new cultures, Stephanie’s children have learned to adapt, connect and see life from different perspectives — lessons she hopes they carry with them wherever they go next. | Photo credit Courtesy Photo

“When we’re planning a vacation, we go, ‘Okay, where do you want to go for vacation?’ And everyone starts naming off different countries,” she said. “We’re not naming off states. We’re not naming off parts of Korea.”

Her children have also learned practical lessons from traveling internationally, from carrying their own passports to navigating customs and immigration. But Stephanie explained that the more meaningful lesson has been their willingness to ask questions and learn from people whose experiences are different from their own.

“They don’t hesitate to ask questions,” she said. “They’ll see something and be like, ‘Oh wait, that’s different than what we do.’ And then they’ll go ask and they want to learn.”

That same curiosity about others has become part of Stephanie’s own experience at the USO. By learning from Korean volunteers and helping American families navigate life in a new country, she has found that volunteering has given her family more than a place to serve; it has given them a place to belong.

As her family prepares for another transition, Stephanie hopes to stay rooted in South Korea. With her husband set to retire in 2027, the family plans to remain in Korea — keeping her connected to the USO community and giving her children a place they know and feel at home. | Photo credit Courtesy Photo

Now, as her family prepares for another transition, Stephanie hopes to keep those roots firmly planted. Her husband is set to retire March 2027, and the family plans to switch sponsorships so they can remain in Korea.

“The USO is very happy about [it] because they get to keep me as a volunteer,” she said. “But also because then, my kids feel comfortable and safe here.”

After everything the USO has come to mean to Stephanie, one word came to mind when asked to describe the organization.

“Family.”

At Osan, Stephanie has found that family can take many forms: a friend who finally convinced her to volunteer, the people with whom she now spends her weekends with, the volunteers who have welcomed her in — and the military families who know they can find a familiar face when they walk through the doors of school and the USO.