ASSIGNMENT: 9/11

Teachers say it is surreal to read about the terrorist attacks in textbooks

By Maria Papadopoulos
ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER

EMILY NELSON/The Enterprise

Taunton High School teacher Kristen McGonigle holds a classroom discussion about the terrorist attacks.

In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, dozens of students at Brockton High School put pen to paper to release their emotions about the attacks on America.

The poems were later bound into a booklet that was distributed throughout the school.

“The writings that the kids did were so powerful,” recalled Principal Susan Szachowicz, who laminated a poem written by a former student and keeps it in her office.

Five years later, a generation of students who lived through the worst foreign attack on U.S. soil is studying the topic in classrooms.

“What’s fascinating to me - having lived it with those students five years ago, and now my current students seeing it in a textbook - it’s slightly surreal,” said Kristen McGonigle, social studies department head at Taunton High School.

When it comes to teaching about Sept. 11, the nation’s educators have largely charted their own course in the classroom. There is no standard national curriculum on that defining day, nor are there many states that even deal with the topic.

A group of families and activists wants to help fill the void.

On Thursday, the World Trade Center United Family Group announced a plan to craft a curriculum about Sept. 11 for high schools. The project, to be guided by the Taft Institute for Government at Queens College, will incorporate oral histories from survivors, eyewitnesses, relatives and others, and ultimately stress participation in civic life.

“We don’t want this to be a static program where kids are going to just sort of roll their eyes like ‘Oh, now we need to go through this dry history account,’” said Anthony Gardner, executive director and founder of WTC United, a non-profit.

So far, the group has raised about $150,000, but it aims to raise at least $200,000 more, Gardner said.

The goal is to have a curriculum ready in a year. The recording of the oral histories will start in the next few weeks.

It is not the first to attempt to craft a Sept. 11 curriculum. In 2002, the New York-based Families and Work Institute released “9/11 As History,” which includes guidelines for lesson plans for pre-K through 12th grade.

Locally, social studies departments and individual faculty members have been composing homegrown study guides from magazine articles and source material such as the Sept. 11 Commission Report - all with the blessing of their principals and the state Department of Education.

“This curriculum is something that will be decided at the local level,” Department of Education spokeswoman Heidi Perlman said.

Students at Stoughton High School may take two courses developed to discuss Sept. 11: World Politics and Extremism and Religions of the World, said Debra Spinelli, assistant superintendent for Stoughton.

“Students have a great deal of interest,” Spinelli said of the courses. “Our kids are still very much interested in what happened five years ago in the world and our country.”

Boston College High, Holy Family School in Rockland and other area parochial schools have also revised their courses. BC High, for example, now includes an extensive unit on terrorism in its 11th-grade government class.

At Taunton High, McGonigle uses newspaper clippings she gathered in the days after the attacks in her lesson plan.

“It’s important for kids to learn about history through primary sources,” McGonigle said.

At Brockton High, students in Lauren Thomas’ advanced placement U.S. history course discuss al Qaeda; students also debate what America should do about terrorism and possible future threats to national security.

“The conversation tends to revolve around ‘Why do (foreigners) hate us so much?’” Thomas said.

On Monday, Robert Uto, a U.S. history teacher at Brockton High School, will combine a lesson on Sept. 11 with the Bill of Rights to also commemorate Constitution Day on Sept. 17.

Students will discuss how far they would go to stand up for their rights and whether or not Americans have to give up their rights to be safe, Uto said.

“They have a clear-cut opinion of how they feel,” Uto said. “The majority of kids last year felt ‘Yes, I will give up basic human rights, support the Patriot Act, if it will make me safer.’”

“It always leaves great discussions,” Uto said.

David Costa, principal at George H. Mitchell Elementary School in Bridgewater, said Sept. 11 has not revised the curriculum there because of the age of the students.

For high-schoolers, however, the political and cultural aftershocks of Sept. 11 are a lesson to be learned.

“I don’t know that you can provide any real answers,” McGonigle said. “I think that you can give some historical perspective to students, and that’s what our job is.”

This story contains information from The Associated Press. Maria Papadopoulos can be reached at papadopoulos@enterprisenews.com.

Sept. 11: Everything changed

HISTORY SUBJECT: Kids lived through it, now taught it

By JOHN P. KELLY
The Patriot Ledger

It has been five years since Sept. 11, 2001, and it’s already a lesson in high school.

“Last year I opened my history book - it was a new history book - and there was a page on it and I thought, ‘Oh my God,’” said Nicki Finamore, a senior at Weymouth High School.

Like others who witnessed that morning of bloodletting as a child, Finamore, now 17, grew up while Sept. 11 became history.

Looking back, South Shore teens say the significance of Sept. 11 was not lost on them, though they were perhaps only 12 or 14 at the time.

Andy Stevens was just 10, a fifth-grader who came home confused by the rumors at school, and turned on the television.

“It looked like something that was made up,” Stevens said. “I had no idea what to think or who to believe.”

Now a sophomore at Hanover High School, Stevens knows that the attacks and all that came after have left an indelible impression on his worldview.

“My cousins have joined the military because of it” and, Stevens said, he may too.

“Sept. 11 has really changed my perspective on things,” he said.

Chelsea James, a 21-year-old who lives in Quincy, said her interest in world affairs developed because of the attacks.

Monique Champagne, 22, a senior at Marshfield High School in 2001, knew the attacks changed the world, she said, but it wasn’t until recently that she discovered they’d managed to change her personally.

During a flight home from California last year, Champagne couldn’t help but dwell on the thought of a hijack.

She thought: “Oh my God, what if somebody’s on the plane? There was no way of getting out.

“I just started breathing heavily.”

Finamore, the Weymouth senior, said the confusion and fear of that day changed her. But to describe exactly how, that’s more difficult.

“I don’t know how to put it in words; I just feel like I’ve seen a lot more ...”

She couldn’t quite finish the thought.

John P. Kelly may be reached at jkelly@ledger.com.