9/11: A Day to Remember
I was 12 years old when 9/11 occurred.
We were watching a movie (Pay It Forward) on one of those bulky TVs that had to be rolled in on a cart, in my 7th-grade social studies class. A man ran into the room, said, “The World Trade Center was just attacked!” and continued down the hall as my teacher jumped up and flipped on the news. Our class was “lucky” to already have a TV up and running.
We watched live footage of the plane going into the second tower, heard reports of the Pentagon being hit and another flight crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. We saw both skyscrapers collapse.
I remember being so confused – I didn’t know the Twin Towers that my family had just visited were the World Trade Center until I saw them on TV. I didn’t know something like this could happen in America, so close to where I lived.
I remember someone asking what was falling out of the building, and a classmate answering that it was people jumping. We watched as victims had to choose which way to die. Those images will never leave me.
I remember later in the day when our Home Ec teacher asked if we wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies during class, or just watch the news. We, unanimously, chose the news.
I remember getting home and my dad had the TV on, and my younger siblings asking me, “This is on every channel, right? So, no Nickelodeon then?” They were 9 & 7; old enough to know something bad was happening, but too young to understand it.
I remember every single house putting up an American flag. Stores almost immediately sold out of them. Newspapers printed them in color on a full page so people could still display them in their windows.
I’m telling you this for a few reasons:
If you didn’t know, today marks the 21st anniversary of the attacks.
It’s an event that deserves to be discussed to ensure its appropriate remembrance.
I really want to encourage other high school teachers to share their own experiences with their students.
Again, if you have the opportunity to discuss it on Monday, please do.
I get that it’s a sensitive subject, that it probably doesn’t fit your curriculum at the moment, that you may have just met these kids last week and haven’t yet built a rapport with them, that you need to stay away from anything that might be political or controversial…
But I don’t think we realize how unique, powerful, and important those memories really are. Almost everyone in my generation and above had a similar experience when it comes to 9/11; we all remember where we were, how we felt, how things changed.
But younger people don’t, and there’s a chance you’re the only one willing to share that with them.
You see, in 2015, I had my first group of students who weren’t alive for 9/11. And when I mentioned remembering it happen, they couldn’t believe I “experienced” it. It was crazy to them that someone they knew had lived through that event they read about and heard about and watched news specials about…
They asked me if I would tell them about that day. They asked what school was like, what our town was like, what airports were like, what America was like, in the days and years to follow. It made the whole thing so much more real for them. It gave them the chance to ask questions, to explore their own assumptions, to understand people’s emotions.
True, their parents might talk to them about it. But they might not.
So, if you have the opportunity to teach them about that, do it.
Better yet, make a lesson out of it. Like analyzing President Bush’s Address to the Nation (click the pink text for the 5-minute video & transcript).
It’s full of ethos / logos / pathos / metaphors / imagery / puns / symbolism / repetition… But what makes it really great is how easily students can see WHY those literary/rhetorical devices were used:
– President Bush immediately uses the repetition of the word “we” in order to instill a sense of unity in the nation.
– The metaphor comparing the U.S. to steel evokes feelings of strength and security, showing how strong America is, even after terrorist attacks.
Want some more help? The image below is the worksheet I created and used with my 10th and 11th grade English classes. Feel free to copy it / modify it / share it / critique it – anything to promote this discussion, right?
So, like Bush said, “None of us will ever forget this day…” And he’s right; the events of 9/11 will forever be a huge piece of our nation’s history.
But I think the details, the emotions, the reactions all deserve to be remembered, too. And it’s up to us to ensure that happens.