Monday, September 11, 2017

Another 9/11 Milestone




Like most people, 9/11 represents a demarcation of personal history. There is life before 9/11 (youth, young adulthood, early career experiences, innocence, ignorance) and life after 9/11 (endless war, fear, anger, sadness, revelation). 


For context, on 9/11/01 I was a young teacher, working a split assignment between a middle and high school in rural Iowa. 


I left the classroom TV on that day, my students saw everything as it happened. 


I was with 8th graders when the second tower was hit, I was with sophomores and juniors when the towers collapsed. I always wonder if showing the horror as it unfolded was the right choice, if I had been a more experienced teacher would I have left the TV on? Not sure, but not one parent complained.



My personal memories of that day are still tough to talk about, as I watched America under attack I was simultaneously trying to reconcile my own fears while attempting to educate and comfort kids. Since that day, I have valued the discussions I have had with students each anniversary, even if their experience that day was only as a child.


Fast forward to now. I am currently a high school teacher in suburban San Diego County. A significant portion of my school’s population either immigrated from Iraq or have family who did so. 


I knew that if I taught long enough I would come to a point where my students had either no recollection of that day or were born after 9/11. It dawned on me as I started to write up a 9/11 discussion prompt this morning that day was today.


Today’s discussion with students who were at most a couple years old on 9/11 went extremely well. Students understood the significance of the day, they could easily make connections to how 9/11 has impacted their lives. Most importantly, they knew the day mattered even if they didn’t have personal emotional memories of it. 


They also asked a lot of questions. 


The most common was, “why did the US decide to attack Iraq?” It was a question that I don’t remember being asked a lot by previous classes WITH memories of that day. It’s a tough one to answer (see George W Bush’s legacy) and requires a much longer blog post, but what I can post here is that at the time right after 9/11 war with Iraq seemed like the right idea for most Americans based on the "facts"given to us by our government ….and that became probably the best “teachable moment” I have ever been able to give students during one of these 9/11 discussions, that just because a war seems like a good idea at the time, doesn’t mean it will always be so. I know this is overly simplistic, but it doesn’t make it any less true. 


Anecdotally it seems that kids who lived the 9/11 experience were focused, like me, on emotional memories. Conversely, students who didn’t have memories of that day were more focused on the “why” of the later wars and looked at it analytically. This isn’t an earth shattering revelation, but for some reason their thoughtful questions gave me some hope that maybe younger generations might be learning something from the decisions made in the emotional climate after 9/11. 


Over the past 16 years I have  taught a lot of kids. Some of my students after graduating went to fight in the wars that came about after 9/11, while some students who sit in my classroom today fled those wars and came to America to be safe. I am thankful for both....


While not as dramatic as the 9/11 of 16 years ago, today still was a significant milestone in my life. I hope that each year I can help kids understand the significance of 9/11, I also hope that they will continue to ask the tough questions about the decisions that came afterwards. 


To all my students, former and current, thank you for being part of the discussion. 


1 comment: