On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Brittney Sanderson and her classmates at Ryle High School in Union watched in terrified awe from room 112.

        Hijacked airplanes struck the World Trade Center towers beginning at 8:46 a.m. The Pentagon burned, a field in Pennsylvania smoked, images mounted and were replayed on the classroom TV.

        Then, the U.S. history students gawked as the burning skyscrapers collapsed in thick clouds of smoke. People they had never met fled the destruction screaming.

        “I was like freaking out,” the 17-year-old senior remembers. “I will never forget that.”

        At 8:46 a.m. today, Brittney and her peers will meet a survivor of the 71st floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center.

        The man, who asked school officials not to release his name before the talk, is now a Boone County resident. He will discuss “Remembering the Day” during an assembly at Ryle High.

Sanderson

        “It's so much different than reading it out of the textbook,” says Susan Daniel, who teaches U.S. history at Ryle.

        This is just one school's plan for commemorating what many educators have called a crucial moment in the education of today's youth.

        Across the Tristate, classrooms will never be far from the recognition that it is Sept. 11.

        “If there's ever a teachable moment, this is it,” Ms. Daniels says. “They've all heard about it, they've all experienced it, and I think it's important that they understand it. They're going to remember Sept. 11 forever, and I want them to go away with an understanding and know what was going on and what we're still doing and how that affects their lives.”

Joan Fleming-Burke, art teacher at Amelia Middle School, painted the image of firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero on a rock outside school Tuesday. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM |

        As the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11 approached, educators across the nation debated how to mark the tragedy that claimed more than 3,000 lives.

        While many teachers want to keep classroom exercises and discussions about that day to a minimum, some superintendents are encouraging teachers to have students discuss the impact Sept. 11 has had on their lives.

        But teachers are also trying to tiptoe through their lessons, to prevent students having to relive the day and its intensely strong emotions.

        Another consideration is how the “blame” for the tragedy is portrayed: Teachers don't want to indict innocent religions or cultures on terrorism charges. But without discussion of culture and religion, how will they teach students the “why” behind the event?

        “These kinds of events can certainly arouse tremendous feelings in youngsters,” says Dr. Philip J. Lazarus, chairman of the National Emergency Assistance Team for the National Association of School Psychologists, which represents 23,000 school psychologists.

LESSON PLANS

In Cincinnati Public Schools, Walnut Hills High School economics teacher Jim Martin will lead a discussion centered on the financial impact of losing the World Trade Center. He will also focus on the courage and leadership of the survivors, using Bruce Springsteen's album, “The Rising,” to relate to his students. “The Rising” is about Sept. 11, with many of the songs written from the perspectives of working people whose lives and fates intersected with the destruction wrought by the hijacked planes.     At Mason Middle School, Maureen Trost and Olivia Davis' language arts classes will plant a Sept. 11 Memorial Garden. After planting the garden, students will recite some of their tribute poems.     At Yavneh Day School in Kenwood, teachers will continue discussions with middle-school students about heroism, good and evil in today's world and how our lives have changed since Sept. 11.     In the Forest Hills School District, Superintendent John B. Patzwald said teachers are encouraged to discuss with students, in an age-appropriate manner, the impact the Sept. 11 tragedies have had on their own lives and on history.

        “It's important for teachers to be as honest as they possibly can. It's a good time to learn about the United States within the context of the world,” he says.

        Each educator developed a plan, but for months, discussion and even dispute about how to teach on this day raged.

        Even the nation's two largest teachers unions disagreed over how to discuss the terrorist attacks with children.

What to say, avoid

        A link on the National Education Association's Web site includes information that had been attributed to Brian Lippincott of John F. Kennedy University's Graduate School of Professional Psychology, who says adults should avoid stereotyping people of countries that might be home to terrorists.

        The American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second-largest teachers union, says teachers could misinterpret such suggestions.

        Sandra Feldman, AFT's president, says lesson plans should be based on the facts, “including what is undisputed about the terrorists who are to blame for the attack on America.”

        “Unfortunately, many well-meaning lesson plans avoid explicit judgment about the aims and character of the terrorist of 9-11, and AFT believes that anything that implicitly seems to blame America for these attacks is wrong,” Ms. Feldman says.

        NEA spokeswoman Barbara Parker declined to comment.

        However, on NEA's Web site, the organization acknowledges criticism “by those who have taken the material out of context. Using this national tragedy to attempt to score political points is a new low, and we urge visitors to make their own assessments of its value.”

        Indisputable, however, is the fact that teachers will have a lot of leeway on how and what, if anything, to teach about 9-11 and its impact. Psychologists and educators agree that the terrorist attacks should not be avoided.

        “I don't think it's a good idea to sweep it under the rug, because it was such an important event in our history,” Dr. Lazarus says. “I wouldn't necessarily focus on all the death and destruction, but I'd probably focus on everything that we've learned. If you're a social studies teacher, it's a good time to focus on man's inhumanity to man.”

        At Ryle High School, Ms. Daniel's history class all week is discussing how the government has clamped down on the civil liberties since 9-11.

        In one case, a New York woman is considering taking legal action after security officials at JFK International Airport insisted she drink from bottles of her own breast milk in front of other passengers to demonstrate it wasn't a poisonous liquid.

Low-key instruction

        Art teacher Joan Fleming-Burke painted an image of the firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero on a rock outside Amelia Middle School as a way of noting “AMS remembers.”

        Bonnie Sizemore, principal of Lincoln Elementary School in Dayton, Ky., says school officials plan to keep their observances of 9-11 low-key.

        “You don't want to bring back a flood of bad memories and scare the children. When it happened, there was panic everywhere,” Ms. Sizemore says.

        “I think you have to be careful in not exposing too much. We've lived through it once.”

        Dr. William Pfohl, professor of psychology at Western Kentucky University, says he expects some teachers to have strong reactions. He recommends that they have a self-understanding of where they are emotionally and behaviorally.

        “The kids are going to follow, in most cases, the teachers' and parents' reactions,” he says. The younger the child, the more impact the teacher will likely have.”

        Teachers should provide time for discussion, he said, which is different from teaching. He said there's not much to be taught, except how to be tolerant.

        “There are differences out there, and while we may not understand it or like it, we're seeing a lot of backlash in America and American schools of problems with tolerance of other people's belief systems and where they come from and national origin,” Dr. Pfohl says.

Teaching peace

        Loveland Middle School will kick off “Peace Day” today. Jill White, who teaches language arts to seventh- and eighth-graders, says all of the school's teachers will teach the same lesson plan, and students will make a peace banner.

        “We have decided that we're going to make a real effort this year to incorporate peace into our curriculum,” Mrs. White said. “We just thought we'd counteract terrorism with being peaceful.”

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