Educators get creative with 9/11 lessons

Approaches on teaching about horrific day stretch beyond books, lectures

Educators today must teach students about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a history lesson.

“No high school student was alive during 9/11 at this point, and so it’s not a memory for them — it’s history,” said Julie Griggs, Bentonville High School English teacher.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, according to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum website. They intentionally flew two of the planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and a third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. A fourth hijacked plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day.

“It’s hard to connect and grasp the terror that struck the country, because I wasn’t alive for it and I didn’t experience it firsthand,” said Kate Karpinski, 17, Bentonville High’s all-student body president.

Teaching of 9/11 isn’t required in Arkansas but is often addressed as part of state-required education for Constitution Day on Sept. 17 and Celebrate Freedom Week during the last week of September, said Steven Weber, Fayetteville School District’s teaching and learning associate superintendent.

Act 682 of 2003 formalized Celebrate Freedom Week for the state, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.

“That particular act speaks to discussing with students sacrifices that we have made for our country, and certainly 9/11 fits into that umbrella very well,” said Sarah DeWitt, Bentonville social studies instructional specialist.

Just how educators teach about 9/11 differs from school to school.

Bentonville High is serving as the state’s first ambassador school for the Freedom Flag Foundation and used the opportunity Tuesday to educate students on 9/11, said Lyndsey Randall, a Bentonville High social studies teacher.

The Virginia-based foundation formed as a nonprofit in 2002, said John Riley, foundation president. The foundation is trying to make the freedom flag a national symbol of 9/11 and has been working since 2019 to create 9/11 educational experiences for schools, fire departments and civic organizations, he said.

The freedom flag tells the story of 9/11 through symbols that include two broad, red stripes to represent the twin towers, five white bars to denote the Pentagon and three white stripes to honor first responders, according to the foundation’s website.

The foundation provides schools with some educational materials, including a freedom flag to display at the school permanently and a loaned piece of steel from the World Trade Center, Riley said.

“The flag teaches 9/11, but when we put a piece of steel in someone’s hands, they can actually touch 9/11,” he said.

The school held a memorial ceremony Tuesday to post the freedom flag below the national colors in front of the high school.

About 150 of the school’s social studies students attended the ceremony, said Jack Loyd, principal.

Nicholas O’Keefe, government and U.S. history teacher at the Springdale School District’s Tyson School of Innovation, said he introduced his high school students to 9/11 Thursday and Friday through an interactive timeline, class discussions, presentations and videos.

O’Keefe said he set a timer on his phone to mark the succession of the attacks for students while teaching.

“The alarms interrupt our discussions and presentations on that day to mirror the complete upheaval of daily life that happened.”

All Rogers School District schools participated in a moment of silence and in reading a passage about 9/11 Friday in conjunction with the Pledge of Allegiance, said Jim Davis, district secondary assistant superintendent.

“We talk about the unity that came after the attacks and remember those that lost their lives,” Davis said.

Bentonville High School staffers and students closed out their school week Friday with a stair climb at Tiger Stadium to honor the firefighters who served and died on 9/11, said Griggs, an English teacher at the school. As many as 110 people participated, she said.

Participants received the name and photo of a firefighter who died during the 9/11 attacks to hold as they walked the equivalent of the World Trade Center’s 110 stories individually or in teams, Griggs said. Stair climbers had to complete about 41 climbs of the stadium’s bleachers to equal the 2,200 steps of the World Trade Center.

Students have to understand American history to comprehend where the country has been and where they personally are going in the future, Weber said.

“Whether they’re leaders or not, our future citizens are in our classrooms every day, and they have to have an understanding of when America was attacked,” he said.

Educating students on 9/11 remains relevant today, as it’s helped shape the world in which students live, Griggs said.

“We’re still seeing the implications of it today,” she said, noting its relevance in current events. “We just left Afghanistan.”