Jennifer McDaniel Martin is a children's book author, EdD student, federal HR specialist, former K-12 educator, and military family advocate. Her debut book and doctoral research both ask the same question: what happens when the world isn't ready for you?
Jennifer spent 15 years teaching across elementary schools, ESL classrooms, community colleges, and virtual programs spanning the United States, Abu Dhabi, and DoDEA schools stateside. That career gave her a front-row view of what children carry with them when they move.
As a military spouse and parent of a military-connected child, she knows firsthand that frequent moves are not just a logistics challenge. They are an educational one. Her doctoral research at Merrimack College asks what schools can do structurally to be ready when these students walk through the door.
Garden of Me grew from the same place: a belief that kids navigating military life deserve to see their stories reflected back at them.
What makes a place home? For some people, home means roots buried deep in one place, the same neighborhood, the same faces, the same streets. But for children who move, home looks different.
Garden of Me explores the idea that home is something you carry with you. Every place you live leaves something behind, a little piece that becomes part of who you are. For military kids who have packed up and started over more than once, that is not a loss. It is a garden growing inside them.
Warm and hopeful, this story honors the unique experience of children who belong to more than one place and reminds them that their roots, however they grow, are something to be proud of.
Civilian public schools are not systematically designed to receive military-connected students. The gap is structural, not personal. Students arrive mid-year, mid-unit, mid-relationship, and schools rarely have the infrastructure to bridge that.
Jennifer's EdD work at Merrimack College examines how school systems can be intentionally designed to support incoming military students. Drawing on qualitative methods, the research centers the voices of families and educators to identify what actually works.
This work connects to Purple Star School designation efforts, transition support frameworks, and the wider conversation about equity for students whose education is shaped by service. Circumstances that are not their choosing.
"DoDEA schools are intentionally designed for military-connected students. Most civilian schools are not. That design gap is the dissertation."
Whether you are a parent, educator, school administrator, researcher, or someone who wants to talk about military-connected students, Jennifer would love to hear from you.