Monday is the 5th anniversary of the World Trade Center Atrocity, and Teaching for Change has resources for educators who want to help elementary and secondary level students untangle the rhetoric about terrorism [via Chris Lott]. Meg Spohn provides the link to the official 9/11 Commission report.
A special issue of Rethinking Schools, called War, Terrorism and Our Classrooms looks quite valuable. It includes articles by prominent writers and intellectuals. You can download the complete Rethinking Schools report [pdf], which is in a newspaper format, suitable for printing on 11X17 paper. Teaching for Change also has articles for teachers looking for background information on 9/11. Other resources for talking to kids about Sept. 11, are available at Tolerance.org.
The tenor of media coverage has gone beyond hyperbole as George Bush further polarized the rhetoric by coining the term Islamo-facism. News and fiction collide now, with ABC’s 9/11 deception, and keeping them straight is nearly impossible for anyone. Kids need a chance to sort through this mess. Students have heard about this event for a significant portion of their lives, but what do they really know? A Critical Media Literacy Teaching Idea presents 13 questions for George Bush that aren’t being covered by the media.
Hate and fear walk hand-in-hand. If we hope to make a difference in the world, we need to educate for truth and justice. This is an opportunity to open some important discussions with students about world events and media.
11 Comments
I remember the morning of 9/11 between being called down for a quick meeting … there were rumors that school would be cancelled … which would have been stupid – kids with nothing to do being sent home without knowing if anyone was home … a few teachers appalled that it wasn’t called off … but then deciding how to handle it with my 4th graders. Should I just not mention it? So I took questions based on what I knew – one of the best moves I ever made. Some of my students thought that planes might fly into our school, or might drop soldiers down to kill us, some said they had been searching the sky for planes before school (which would be scary, our school is in the landing path of the Reno airport) and all kinds of other misinformation (must have been briefed by the Bush administration) so we talked for about 45 minutes and I could tell they were reassurred.
I was a fourth-grade teacher that year, too. I let the kids mess around with blocks and legos that day for some reason – maybe it was lunch time – and they set up towers and flew pretend airplanes into them. The horror! What has happened to us? Your memory of your students that day is very similar to mine. The passing of time hasn’t brought us any more clarity.
Doug, I was teaching third grade in Seattle on that day. I saw the second plane hit the tower live as I was watching TV, getting out of bed at 6:15 to get ready for school. I remember this feeling of dread for the responsibility I would have with my kids. About half my class knew about it when they came to school. They just had to talk about it, and so did I. We talked about it several times throughout the day. It is so important to be, at times like that, honest, to admit to fear, to acknowledge uncertainty. And yet it is ultimately more important to appear fearless and all knowing, so those you are taking care of have something to hang on to, something to reassure them that the world is not about to end. Hard to do when you are not so sure yourself….
Thanks for all the links, I’ll be looking them over tonight (and avoiding the ABC/Limbaugh version of who was responsible). In class on 9/11/06 I’ll set aside some time. There is a new, different feeling of responsibility that I have tonight. The kids I’ll teach tomorrow were 3 years old on 9/11/01. They will never feel it the way those only a couple of years older than they are will feel it – for the rest of their lives. Their “truth” will come, as you say, Doug, from the accurate retelling of the facts. I’ll do my best tomorrow. Good luck to us all. – Mark
There may be no more powerful testimony than the retelling of events as we remember them.
Good luck to us all.
Sobering post Doug, like you and the previous posters I was in my classroom when the 1st plane hit, I had a class when the second hit as well. The only difference is that I was in my computer lab and my students had access to msn.com, and cnn.com. I teach Computer Applications in a suburb of the city and some of our students and teachers lost loved ones.
I think it was that moment where I truly felt inadequate as a computer/technology teacher. I knew I could force my students not to look online for information. But, I also knew that the moment my back was turned they would anyway.
I was sure they would rush to the library to find out more information during their study-halls. My ability to filter was gone and I knew they were quicker and probably more resourceful.
It was 9/11 that made me realize there is so much for me to learn In technology and teaching.
I know this may sound like a novice question but I am serious, “How can I teach my kids to seek out more truth with out coming off too political?” Our community is very tricky at times and being a teacher here is like dancing on a razors edge.
Thank you for making me think. Hopefully I will get my own blog going.
Hi Jennifer, your question is interesting on a couple of levels. One thing that strikes me is that I’ve been contemplating what I’ll do in the morning – it’s the first time this year that all my students will be in front of computers – and I was hoping to find some sites that would be good for fourth-graders to look at that might get them thinking about 9/11. As Mark points out, elementary kids were all very young when it happened, and don’t have any sense of what it means to the rest of us. So, while you are wondering about how to de-politicize the subject, I’m trying to think of ways to make it matter to them – to problematize it.
One way to approach it is to think of things that might be considered problems that have come up since that day – things that might be festering in the background, but not directly noticed. I like the metaphor of “dancing on the razor’s edge” because it tells me that you know you have a responsibility to teach difficult subject matter.
What isn’t political? If the president came to your classroom and made a speech, that would be OK, wouldn’t it? A completely political event. I use the “some people say…” construction. I try not to take a position, but to stake out various sides of a discussion and let the kids consider the merits.
I looked at the Rethinking Schools material just a few moments ago. There’s a lot to think about there….
As I think on this further, I’m reminded that many students in our community have parents who are in the military, stationed in Iraq at this time. Political considerations aside, care has to be taken with the personal feelings of safety and concern for loved-ones that students might have. There are some 9/11 as History Lesson plans, organized according to grade level and subject area. I’ve not looked through many of them, but they seem constructive.
You may also want to consider using the CNN free re-broadcast of its 9/11 coverage all day today. Whether to use with older AP and other more mature students or just as background, it is a great document to take a look at.http://www.cnn.com/pipeline/landing/index.sept11.html
Our 9/11 school day is over down under and apart from the fact the above mentioned movie “The Path to 9/11″ is about to start on Channel Seven as a prime time event (how will Aussies be able to differentiate between truth and fiction when they watch? Will they care?) the issue didn’t come up. My class were five and six year olds when it happened so it’s still hard to shift Steve Irwin’s death from the front of their consciousness at present. I think back to my reactions at the time – it was so unreal – but it didn’t really impact on my world that much. I do remember Australians in the street saying, “Not here, mate. We’re not important enough.” The events unfolded during our night time and I remember getting up in the morning and finding that all television channels were running coverage of who know’s what – I was busy getting ready for work and Aaron was upset that the children’s programs weren’t on. It wasn’t until I got to school and spoke to some colleagues who had stayed up watching late night TV who put me in the picture. Anyway, I hope your day goes well – I can’t appreciate what it means for Americans but I can empathise.
Cynthia, If I had older students I might put the CNN pipleline up up on my LCD, but I hesitate to do it with kids as young as the ones I’m working with. It does have value as background, and I hope we can archive some of it to look at down the road.
Graham, my wife still remembers the phone message I left from my classroom. It was still very early in Alaska – a lot of people weren’t up yet. I turned on the radio while I was getting ready for the day, and I heard a special report about a plane that hit the Trade Center. Then more…and I was – panic isn’t the word, but there was some adrenalin running. I knew nobody was up, and I said to the machine, “Turn on the TV. We’re under attack.”
I think back and wonder about what an odd thing it was to say. In Alaska, we never really felt threatened, except in a political sense.
Now I see threat coming from distortions of the truth, threat to our way of life as our freedoms are compromised in the name of security, threat to the stability of other nations as ours assumes an aggressive colonial posture attempting to export a particular version of Democracy that is ill-suited to translation, threat to people around the world who have to suffer and endure our violence, threat to the well being of military families who are sacrificing loved ones, threat to our sense of who we are and who we could be…
Things are different now.
I don’t have a problem with the term islamofascism. It accurately describes a real and dangerous phenomenon in our world. I have been using it as a delicious tag for some time, well before the recent use of it by Bush. I wrote some further thoughts about September 11 today on my blog.
I hear ya–this is tricky stuff. I’m currently teaching an ESL/education course for teachers of English as a foreign language who are from another country. It’s not easy to handle adults in class with this topic, either. Thanks for the good thoughts, and for the linklove.
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