Sarah Martin, 20, a junior at Fairfield University, doesn't remember what her principal said when she came on the intercom 10 years ago, interrupting a fifth-grade science class to announce school was letting out early. She remembers the uncharacteristically serious tone in her voice.
From that moment on, 9/11 has been a current event, a once a year commemoration.
Ashley Delossantos, 10, a fifth-grader at Classical Studies Academy, can tell you how many people died in the attacks, how many were from Connecticut, how many minutes lapsed between the first and second plane hitting the World Trade Center and how many stories tall New York's iconic twin towers once stood. Her research has taken her to the state's 9/11 memorial at Sherwood Island State Park in Westport and to a Bridgeport firehouse to interview those who knew Dana Hannon, a former city firefighter, who died that day.
To her, 9/11 has always been history.
A decade after the terrorist attacks, what students learn about that day is still fueled largely by teacher interest and motivation. For a long time, the topic was deemed too sensitive. Few states require 9/11 be taught, although New Jersey just released a suggested curriculum in July that included it. And although the topic has made its way into textbooks, teachers have a tough time getting to it.
In Connecticut, there is no mandate that 9/11 be taught. But the subject fits into several strands of the state's recommended social studies framework, which says students should demonstrate an understanding of significant events in U.S. history. Some teachers bring it up in world history and have discovered websites that allow students to take a virtual tour of the new 9/11 memorial and listen to oral histories of that day. Others may take them on field trips to local monuments to the victims of the attack.
Much of what is taught depends on the grade level.
ELEMENTARY
The red, white and blue papered "Remembrance Chain," which is 2,975 links long, can go up and down the third floor hallway of Classical Studies Academy five times. It took fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at the school most of the week to create it. They were careful to inscribe the name of each victim of the attack on the finished product. The fourth grade turned the chain making project into a math lesson. In the sixth grade, students debate whether security measures instituted since 9/11 are worth the infringement on personal freedoms.
The hallway is also flush with models of the twin towers and the Pentagon. There are poster boards that talk about Flight 93, where passengers on the hijacked United Airlines plane charged the cockpit, as the first battle in the war against terror.
In Ryan Howard's class, students take turns sharing what they have learned.
Toni Phillips learned that just about everyone older than she is has an answer to where they were and what they were doing on 9/11.
Tyiese Warren learned persistence pays off. It took 10 years, but the nation finally caught Osama bin Laden. "What he did to the country wasn't good," he told his classmates.
While vocabulary sheets have words like "chaos," "debris" and "horrific," Howard also likes to discuss the brighter spots. There are the thousands who escaped from the towers that day and the scores of heroes who emerged, risking their lives to save others. In the weeks that followed, it was hard to find a car that didn't display an American flag.
"We came together as a country," he said in an almost nostalgic tone. "It's important for them to remember the good that happened."
MIDDLE SCHOOL
At Park City Prep, a city charter school for middle school students, teacher Chris Van Etten has covered 9/11 for the past six years.
"The first year I taught, it was in their back pocket. It was fresh. Now it's almost alien,'' he said.
He tells his students how the computers went down in his Stamford UBS office that morning. and how he turned on the television in time to see the plane hit the second tower.
"Then it got scary," he told his class.
The school's headmaster, Bruce Ravage, is another primary source. He worked a few blocks away from the twin towers and was getting out of his car on the roof of a parking garage near the Hudson River in time to see the second plane approach, disappear and explode into the tower. It was so unreal, he started walking toward work anyway until he realized everyone else was fleeing in the opposite direction.
"At some point, I stopped myself, turned around and got my car," said Ravage. He was on the West Side Highway by the time he heard from his car radio that the tower collapsed.
This year, Van Etten had his seventh-graders role play what it used to be like getting on a plane, with shoes, soda bottles and very little screening, compared to now.
He likens al-Qaida to a street gang and has his class tell him that the goal of terrorism is to scare people. The class answered a true and false sheet, answering correctly that most of the hijackers that day were not from Iraq or Afghanistan but Saudi Arabia, an American ally.
Obumneme Nkwo, 11, said it's important to learn about 9/11. He imagines people who live farther away from New York and Washington think about it less.
HIGH SCHOOL
At Trumbull High School on Friday, Katie Boland, teaching an AP Government class, posed a question to her class. Do they view 9/11 as a defining moment in American history in the same way as Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination?
Many in her class said it was indeed a game-changer. It was the first time they felt Americans were not invisible, though as second-graders then, it was hard for many of them to put it into words until now.
Alyssa Zabin remembers it was picture day at her school. But in the middle of it, she was abruptly sent back to homeroom. "I recall asking my mom `Why did this happen?' And she responded, `I just don't know,' " said Zabin.
Kathleen LaBoa said she grew up wanting to serve her country. She hopes to join the U.S. Navy.
"Sept. 11 inspired me," LaBoa said.
Jonathan Bui, another Trumbull senior, said with two wars in the Middle East, anti-terrorism legislation and changes to national security, no other event so profoundly defined his life.
COLLEGE
At the college level, 9/11 lends itself to all kinds of subjects, not just history or civil liberties.
Fairfield University music professor Laura Nash put aside Mozart on Friday to discuss why popular culture has not responded as deeply as she thought it should to the tragic event. She also pointed out that one of the first public events following the attacks was a concert by the New York Philharmonic of Brahms' Requiem.
Tracey Robert, a counseling professor at Fairfield University uses 9/11 to teach students how to respond to trauma and crisis situations.
In Betsy Bowen's advanced composition course for future secondary school teachers, 9/11 is an introduction into how not to shy away from sensitive topics.
"The idea is you can treat difficult, controversial world events. You don't have to run away from it, but you also have to treat it with some circumspect," said Bowen.
The last time she taught the lesson, which was on the one-year anniversary of 9/11, a student in the class who was baptized by New York Fire Department Chaplin Mychal F. Judge who died that day, was hit hard.
"I think 10 years later, feelings may be less intense unless they had someone who died," she said. "But there is no telling."
Nikki Milewski, 20, a junior, said the discussion took her back to her fifth-grade math class. A sixth grade teacher rushed in to borrow a television and didn't say why. No one at school told her what happened. She didn't find out about the attacks until her parents told her when she got home from school.
"I remember being very scared that there was going to be another attack on my neighborhood," she said.
Since then, she said, the topic has gotten little more than a moment of silence, until now.
From that moment on, 9/11 has been a current event, a once a year commemoration.
Ashley Delossantos, 10, a fifth-grader at Classical Studies Academy, can tell you how many people died in the attacks, how many were from Connecticut, how many minutes lapsed between the first and second plane hitting the World Trade Center and how many stories tall New York's iconic twin towers once stood. Her research has taken her to the state's 9/11 memorial at Sherwood Island State Park in Westport and to a Bridgeport firehouse to interview those who knew Dana Hannon, a former city firefighter, who died that day.
To her, 9/11 has always been history.
A decade after the terrorist attacks, what students learn about that day is still fueled largely by teacher interest and motivation. For a long time, the topic was deemed too sensitive. Few states require 9/11 be taught, although New Jersey just released a suggested curriculum in July that included it. And although the topic has made its way into textbooks, teachers have a tough time getting to it.
In Connecticut, there is no mandate that 9/11 be taught. But the subject fits into several strands of the state's recommended social studies framework, which says students should demonstrate an understanding of significant events in U.S. history. Some teachers bring it up in world history and have discovered websites that allow students to take a virtual tour of the new 9/11 memorial and listen to oral histories of that day. Others may take them on field trips to local monuments to the victims of the attack.
Much of what is taught depends on the grade level.
ELEMENTARY
The red, white and blue papered "Remembrance Chain," which is 2,975 links long, can go up and down the third floor hallway of Classical Studies Academy five times. It took fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at the school most of the week to create it. They were careful to inscribe the name of each victim of the attack on the finished product. The fourth grade turned the chain making project into a math lesson. In the sixth grade, students debate whether security measures instituted since 9/11 are worth the infringement on personal freedoms.
The hallway is also flush with models of the twin towers and the Pentagon. There are poster boards that talk about Flight 93, where passengers on the hijacked United Airlines plane charged the cockpit, as the first battle in the war against terror.
In Ryan Howard's class, students take turns sharing what they have learned.
Toni Phillips learned that just about everyone older than she is has an answer to where they were and what they were doing on 9/11.
Tyiese Warren learned persistence pays off. It took 10 years, but the nation finally caught Osama bin Laden. "What he did to the country wasn't good," he told his classmates.
While vocabulary sheets have words like "chaos," "debris" and "horrific," Howard also likes to discuss the brighter spots. There are the thousands who escaped from the towers that day and the scores of heroes who emerged, risking their lives to save others. In the weeks that followed, it was hard to find a car that didn't display an American flag.
"We came together as a country," he said in an almost nostalgic tone. "It's important for them to remember the good that happened."
MIDDLE SCHOOL
At Park City Prep, a city charter school for middle school students, teacher Chris Van Etten has covered 9/11 for the past six years.
"The first year I taught, it was in their back pocket. It was fresh. Now it's almost alien,'' he said.
He tells his students how the computers went down in his Stamford UBS office that morning. and how he turned on the television in time to see the plane hit the second tower.
"Then it got scary," he told his class.
The school's headmaster, Bruce Ravage, is another primary source. He worked a few blocks away from the twin towers and was getting out of his car on the roof of a parking garage near the Hudson River in time to see the second plane approach, disappear and explode into the tower. It was so unreal, he started walking toward work anyway until he realized everyone else was fleeing in the opposite direction.
"At some point, I stopped myself, turned around and got my car," said Ravage. He was on the West Side Highway by the time he heard from his car radio that the tower collapsed.
This year, Van Etten had his seventh-graders role play what it used to be like getting on a plane, with shoes, soda bottles and very little screening, compared to now.
He likens al-Qaida to a street gang and has his class tell him that the goal of terrorism is to scare people. The class answered a true and false sheet, answering correctly that most of the hijackers that day were not from Iraq or Afghanistan but Saudi Arabia, an American ally.
Obumneme Nkwo, 11, said it's important to learn about 9/11. He imagines people who live farther away from New York and Washington think about it less.
HIGH SCHOOL
At Trumbull High School on Friday, Katie Boland, teaching an AP Government class, posed a question to her class. Do they view 9/11 as a defining moment in American history in the same way as Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination?
Many in her class said it was indeed a game-changer. It was the first time they felt Americans were not invisible, though as second-graders then, it was hard for many of them to put it into words until now.
Alyssa Zabin remembers it was picture day at her school. But in the middle of it, she was abruptly sent back to homeroom. "I recall asking my mom `Why did this happen?' And she responded, `I just don't know,' " said Zabin.
Kathleen LaBoa said she grew up wanting to serve her country. She hopes to join the U.S. Navy.
"Sept. 11 inspired me," LaBoa said.
Jonathan Bui, another Trumbull senior, said with two wars in the Middle East, anti-terrorism legislation and changes to national security, no other event so profoundly defined his life.
COLLEGE
At the college level, 9/11 lends itself to all kinds of subjects, not just history or civil liberties.
Fairfield University music professor Laura Nash put aside Mozart on Friday to discuss why popular culture has not responded as deeply as she thought it should to the tragic event. She also pointed out that one of the first public events following the attacks was a concert by the New York Philharmonic of Brahms' Requiem.
Tracey Robert, a counseling professor at Fairfield University uses 9/11 to teach students how to respond to trauma and crisis situations.
In Betsy Bowen's advanced composition course for future secondary school teachers, 9/11 is an introduction into how not to shy away from sensitive topics.
"The idea is you can treat difficult, controversial world events. You don't have to run away from it, but you also have to treat it with some circumspect," said Bowen.
The last time she taught the lesson, which was on the one-year anniversary of 9/11, a student in the class who was baptized by New York Fire Department Chaplin Mychal F. Judge who died that day, was hit hard.
"I think 10 years later, feelings may be less intense unless they had someone who died," she said. "But there is no telling."
Nikki Milewski, 20, a junior, said the discussion took her back to her fifth-grade math class. A sixth grade teacher rushed in to borrow a television and didn't say why. No one at school told her what happened. She didn't find out about the attacks until her parents told her when she got home from school.
"I remember being very scared that there was going to be another attack on my neighborhood," she said.
Since then, she said, the topic has gotten little more than a moment of silence, until now.