Teaching September 11th

Teaching September 11th.  What an absurd notion; to TEACH 9/11.  Eleven years ago, on an eerily similar Tuesday morning in New England, the once in a generation (hopefully lifetime) event that shocked the world took our breath away on live television and changed everything about America.  But as a high school history teacher, I have had to transition from talking to kids about their experiences that dreadful day (literally, my 8th day of teaching was September 11, 2002) to teaching them about it.  The dilemna is how you go about teaching something that as still so raw and emotional for this thirty something to young people that only have recollections of 9/11 like I do of the Challenger explosion in 1986. I guess the short answer is to make them "feel" it.   

High school students today know a great deal about that day.  They were old enough to remember some images of that day but young enough that they were sheltered from the harsh realities it presented.  In this information age, every year they are inundated with images and stories of inexlicaple horror, terror and courage.  They know Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks, the subsequent wars we faught are a direct result of it, and even that it happened because a fringe group of Muslim extremists that in no way represent the true views of the Muslim faith took exception to United States foreign policy and our way of life.  Yet, as I look into their eyes I do not see sorrow; I see amazement and astonishment.  This is no fault of their own it's just that to them, 9/11 was an event that occurred in the not to distant past. A vague day when things seemed to change but they weren't sure while until much later.  A time, as one student put it, when his "parents started acting real weird and calling to check on everyone they could think of."  To the other 90% of us every September 11th has become a day when you wake up and immediately return to a depressed state, remember where we were, and still try to wrap our heads around the whole thing.

To me, living in the post-9/11 world means that you should have more than information and knowledge about that day and how it changed our world.  It is just as important to have an emotional connection.  But just like I don't want my kids to experience the hardships of my childhood, I don't want my students to truly KNOW what it was like to be twenty-one and in front of a TV watching nearly 3,000 people die in real time.  In that sense, I envy my students.  They don't look at a clock when it's 9:11am or 9:11pm and visualize death. They don't hear a plane flying what can perceived as being "low" and think it will all happen again.  And they don't have the truly heavy heart that all us elders feel every year. So when I think about it, maybe "feeling" it isn't the best idea.  I just wish in some way, while staying sheltered, they could feel the appeciation for and brevity of life that September 11th brought to our hearts.