HANCOCK COUNTY — Emily Gardner stood at the front of her second-grade classroom Monday at Fortville Elementary School, her students seated on the floor in front of her. She had just finished telling them about the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, through a presentation adapted for the youngsters, one that told of “bad guys” who “wanted to hurt the United States.”
Then she asked what kind of heroes they thought helped in the aftermath of the attacks. Little hands shot into the air, followed by answers like firefighters, police officers, medics, doctors, nurses and military members.
“Even though this is a really tragic, sad day, we have to think how courageous and how brave our heroes were to step up and help,” Gardner told her students.
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Heroism is just one of the topics this week as a number of teachers throughout the county lead lessons on the 9/11 attacks that occurred 18 years ago today. For this generation born after that fateful day, this is history, not personal memories: The vast majority hadn’t been born yet, and the few who were are too young to remember. Educators want them to understand how the attacks shaped the world they live in today.
Gardner was in the first grade when al-Qaida-linked hijackers seized four airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed them into the World Trade Center’s two towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Passengers aboard the fourth plane thwarted hijackers, causing it to crash in a field in Pennsylvania. About 3,000 people were killed in the attacks.
Gardner and her students spent much of the lesson on Monday discussing those who stepped up to help on 9/11 and those who help keep them safe right in their own communities. They spent the last part of the lesson writing thank-you letters to firefighters, police officers and military members.
“When you think about the tragic events that happened, you want to present it in a light that’s not scary to young children,” Gardner said. “…I think that teaching about it is a great way to use real-life examples to teach about empathy and unity and coming together.”
She said she often leads lessons on significant dates but that Monday was her first opportunity to do one on 9/11.
“It’s something that I think they really enjoyed to learn about and really ties in well with talking about heroes and how our community can come together to help one another in times of need,” she said.
At Greenfield-Central High School on Monday, juniors in Maranda Anderson’s U.S. history class discussed the Sept. 11 attacks and other “iconic moments” in American history.
Students looked at Thomas E. Franklin’s famous “Raising the Flag at Ground Zero” photo — firefighters hoisting the American Flag in the rubble of the Twin Towers — as well as four other iconic images: the Black Power protest at the 1968 Olympics; a Lewis Hine photo of a young girl in a factory that exposed child labor in America; a portrait of prominent 1930s photographer Dorothea Lange; and Joe Rosenthal’s “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” taken during World War II.
Seventeen-year-old Chris O’Connor was born a year after 9/11, but he’s heard accounts of the attacks from family and teachers. Chris said his parents told him Sept. 11 was the “most shocking” moment in their lives, and in classes, Chris said he’s learned about how the terrorist attacks impacted the aviation industry and intensified airport security.
Chris said the “Raising the Flag at Ground Zero” photo shows him how resilient the country, and its first-responders on the scene in New York City, were despite the horrors surrounding them.
“It’s just heroic,” he said. “It calls back to the photo from Iwo Jima, and that’s not just because they kind of look the same, but it’s because these people were finding time to raise this flag in such a time of tragedy.”
Anderson, who was a 21-year-old graduate student at Wichita State University on 9/11, said she remembers watching the second plane hit the South Tower on television with her friends and feeling an uneasiness and questioning what had happened. Two years ago, Anderson toured the Sept. 11 memorial at ground zero with a group of teachers, and she called the area “serene.”
Sarah Terrell, a social studies teacher at Mt. Vernon High School, will lead her government classes in a discussion today on presidential speeches on historic events, like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address following the attack on Pearl Harbor and George W. Bush’s speech on 9/11.
“How did the nation come together and then try to overcome something that was initially very devastating?” she intends to have her students ponder.
Terrell will task her history students with interviewing their parents or a family friend who was at least in the eighth grade on Sept. 11, 2001, to learn of their personal experience regarding the attacks. She said she encourages her students to record the interviews so they can listen to them in the future and share with their own children one day.
Some of her students have told her about their parents’ recollections of being glued to their televisions after the attacks, something she could relate to as an Indiana University sophomore at the time.
“It was so emotional and scary,” Terrell said.
New Palestine High School world history and current events teacher Mitch Burk, along with U.S. history teachers Shelby Hall and Chris Story, all of whom were in junior high school on 9/11, have plans to address the attacks in their classes this week as well.
Burk will start his lesson with a video of clips from news agencies depicting how 9/11 started as a typical Tuesday morning before quickly unfolding into a day Americans would never forget. He’ll also lead a conversation about common “where were you when” events, from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to their modern-day equivalents. Burk will be able to apply his experience from his recent trip to New York as well. While he visits the city every couple of years, this will be his closest trip to a 9/11 anniversary.
All three of the New Pal teachers will take their students on a virtual tour of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, too.
Story’s curriculum will include a digital timeline of events from the day, primary sources of video footage shot on scene and a discussion.
Hall said 9/11 is important for students to learn about because Americans continue to live through the repercussions of the attack, like the ongoing U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Students should understand what U.S./Middle East relations were like before and after the attacks in order to bridge the gap between then and today, she continued.
The teachers noted that most, if not all, of their students had not yet been born when the attacks occurred.
“The further we get away from 2001, the less connection we actually see the students having with the date,” Burk said.
So much changed so quickly after the attacks, the teachers said, from air travel to many Americans’ perspectives on Muslims. But their students have only ever lived in a post-9/11 world.
“They only know what it’s like to travel through an airport post 9/11,” Hall said. “…There’s a whole slew of things that are relevant beyond just the morning that it happened.”
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Events planned today to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks:
Sugar Creek Township Fire Department will hold a ceremony by the flag pole at Fire Station 45, 3545 S. County Road 600W, New Palestine. The event will start 08:49 a.m. Wednesday, which is when the first tower was struck.
Greenfield Police Department is hosting a Hometown Heroes Cornhole Tourney to celebrate their local first-responders in honor of 9/11.
The event will take place in the Living Alley in Greenfield at 5 p.m. Wednesday.
The Greenfield Veterans Honor Guard will be on hand, and there will be an awards ceremony presented by Greenfield American Legion Post 119.
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