September 11th falls on a Sunday this year. It is the 21st anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacks that shocked the country and led to U.S. involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that dragged on for almost two decades. As teachers prepare lessons on September 11th for Monday September 12th, there are important questions to consider.
- What is age and grade appropriate?
- How to include children in your classes whose families were impacted by the events on that day and the days that follow during the cleanup and the military actions?
- What is the difference, if any, about what we teach on September 11th and what we teach about September 11th?
In 1941, President Roosevelt called December 7, the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, a day that would live in infamy. That was a date for my parents’ generation. I don’t think it has had special significance for decades. Each generation has its own symbolic days that people remember. I was 13 years old and in Junior High School when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. I remember my teachers crying and not telling us why. My friends and I learned what happened when we listened to the radio at a local candy store on our way home.
9/11 had enormous significance for people who lived through it and for people who suffered personal loss. But like December 7, it does not have the same meaning for students today. For most young people, things that happened before they were born are ancient history. That poses a special problem for teachers. Students entering their senior year of high school were born in 2005, four years after 9/11.
Teachers have to be aware of who their students are and what is age appropriate for their class. In the New York metropolitan area there is the possibility that teachers will have a student whose family was directly impacted by 9/11, either because someone died that day or someone was a first responder who has suffered debilitating and life threatening injuries. You might talk with the student before the lesson and ask them if they would like to speak about their family’s story. There might be a first responder in the community who would visit a class to discuss his or her experiences that day or during the months long clean up that followed. A lesson for young children will be different than a lesson for high school students. There are pictures books that introduce younger children to the events of 9/11. Some of the best focus on the role of first responders. The Man in the Red Bandana is a true story of personal heroism. Welles Remy Crowther died in the collapse of the World Trade Center’s South Towers while rescuing other people.
Before I teach about a topic, I always ask what is important to know and why? That is the starting point of a lesson. We want upper elementary, middle, and high school students to have some awareness of what took place on that day and after. Students should discuss how Americans responded and why they responded in the way that they did? This should include how the nation came together, but also the experiences of Islamic Americans and other South Asians who were the victims of hate crimes following the attack. In high school, different questions need to be examined as well, not necessarily on September 11, but they can be introduced on that day. Was the United States justified in going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan? What have been the consequences of those wars for the United States and for the people in those countries? Has the United States lived up to its responsibilities to 9/11 first responders and their families?
Online Teaching Material
Rethinking Schools: War, Terrorism and Our Classrooms - Teaching in the Aftermath of the September 11th Tragedy (Includes essays by Stephen J. Gould, Alfie Kohn, Bill Bigelow, and Arunhati Roy). https://rethinkingschools.org/special-collections/war-terrorism-and-our-classrooms/
The September 11th Education Trust: Creating Timelines and Using Personal Narratives and U.S. National Security and 9/11. http://www.learnabout9-11.org
Labib’s Café: Sharing the Bad Times In an Egyptian cafe on Steinway Street in Astoria, hate spilled over and was calmly mopped up four nights after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Towers. Four young men entered the Queens, New York coffee shop that Labib Salama, an Egyptian immigrant to the US, had owned for five years. The gang did not hurt anyone, but they smashed everything: the tables, the mirrors, and the pictures on the walls. The police caught the young men but Labib Salama refused to press charges. He told the police he understood their anger and did not to create more. The young men returned to coffee shop an hour later, apologized, and helped to clean up the store that they had ransacked. Judith Sloan talked with owner Labib Salama and his customer Nasser Elgabry about these events. Produced, edited and narrated by Judith Sloan for the Crossing the BLVD series. https://earsay.org/radio/labibs-cafe-sharing-bad-times-2/
The West Wing: These episodes of the television series The West Wing examined terrorism in the wake of September 11, 2001. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDsY8qCxLHQ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VatPKqTgzh4&feature=related
President George W. Bush Addresses the Nation, September 11, 2001: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911addresstothenation.htm
DBQ: Evaluating the U.S. Response to 9/11
Atif Khalil developed this document-based essay for use with high school United States history classes. It is intended as an assessment for a final unit where students examine issues facing the United States and the world at the start of the 21st century. https://nyscss.wildapricot.org/page-998368
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