25 years later, educators & students face challenge of connecting with 9/11

States have different requirements about teaching the historic events of that day.

By staff and wire reports

For three days this summer, teachers converged at the Flight 93 National Memorial in remote western Pennsylvania to talk about 9/11.

How best to educate a new generation about the attacks 25 years ago? Which details are appropriate for young kids? What do victims’ families want students to be told about the dead?

“Even worse than getting started wrong or using inappropriate language is the total omission of telling the story,” Gordon Felt, whose brother Edward Felt died on United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, told teachers in one session. “That’s our biggest fear.”

Teaching about 9/11 in schools is more important than ever now that about one-third of Americans were born after al-Qaida hijackers crashed planes and killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and rural Shanksville, Pa. A growing majority of states — at least 40 — expect or suggest that public schools address 9/11 in some way, but the provisions vary widely in scope, specificity and framing, The Associated Press has found.

State education standards range from detailed course content to broad concepts. As a result, some don’t specify what to teach about Sept. 11.

A decade after the attacks, about 60% of states didn’t explicitly mention 9/11 in their education standards, but there has been more movement toward teaching it as time passed and the attacks were seen as “a settled event,” said University of Wisconsin education professor Jeremy Stoddard. He, now-retired dean Diana Hess and colleagues have researched 9/11 education for decades.

“For those states that include it, it seems to be going in much more depth than it was in the past,” Stoddard said.

States vary in teaching about 9/11

Twenty-five states have laws or education standards that require or expect public schools to provide instruction specifically on the Sept. 11 attacks, and another 13 have optional mentions of 9/11, according to data AP gathered. Several other states have laws requiring or recommending school observances, bringing the number of states with some policy to at least 40. In states without specific laws or standards, schools and teachers also may choose on their own to discuss the attacks.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2024 signed Act 25 into law, requiring public school districts to observe a moment of silence every year on Sept. 11. It also mandated the state Department of Education to create a tool kit of materials, including videos, lesson plans and classroom resources, for teachers to incorporate into their 9/11 curricula.

The tool kit has been viewed online more than 7,300 times, said Department of Education spokesperson Erin James.

Pennsylvania is one of 15 states nationwide that requires some type of Sept. 11 recognition in schools, said Donna Gibson, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Flight 93.

But in Gibson’s assessment, the legislation alone is not enough. It does not require that educators teach about the historic event in a certain way — or that they teach about it at all, she said.

“There isn’t a textbook that has the information on what to teach about 9/11,” Gibson said.

Pennsylvania is a local-control state, meaning school districts make their own curriculum decisions, James said.

“We encourage Pennsylvania schools to teach their students about the events of Sept. 11, 2001 — just as we encourage schools to teach their students about the Holocaust — but state law does not require it,” she said via email.

States’ classroom lessons don’t always map neatly with their political leanings. States as politically different as California, Florida, New Jersey and North Dakota all propose or expect that students discuss post-9/11 efforts to balance national security and civil liberties, for instance.

But social studies overhauls that reflect conservative priorities have tended to include Sept. 11. A 2023 Florida law even specifies that certain middle and high school courses spend 45 minutes on 9/11.

In Congress, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., has proposed a resolution encouraging all states to teach students about the attacks.

Educating teachers, along with students

According to data gathered by the Associated Press, about 60% of U.S. young adults say they first learned about the attacks through school, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll that included about 250 adults born after 2000. But if educators’ role in 9/11 awareness is clear, it hasn’t been easy.

When Megan Jones became the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum’s education chief in 2014, teachers told her they worried about bringing up traumatic memories for students. Now, pupils often need basic facts, and teachers reconcile their own pained recollections with the reality that students see Sept. 11, 2001, as distant history.

The key is “helping them to understand how 9/11 ultimately shaped the world that they live in,” Jones said. The New York memorial has raised over $25 million this year to enhance student field trips, teacher training and other education programs.

‘We connected them to the story’

The challenges educators face when teaching about 9/11 are what prompted Friends of Flight 93 to organize a symposium at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Somerset County earlier this year. Forty educators — representing the 40 passengers and crew members who died on Flight 93 — were selected from a pool of about 70 applicants.

U.S. Park Ranger Claire Affinito, left, leads a tour for a group of educators June 23 at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa. AP

The symposium partially stemmed from the nonprofit’s “Teach to Remember 9/11” initiative. What started as a one-day event held Sept. 11 has expanded into a program that connects with tens of thousands of students worldwide.

Park rangers present about Flight 93 and answer students’ questions via livestream sessions held from Aug. 31 through Sept. 11. Teachers also can show students prerecorded videos about the passengers and crew members.

Today, educators can tune into a livestream of the memorial’s morning observance and afternoon ceremony.

The teachers selected for the symposium spent 2½ days exploring the memorial, viewing artifacts from the crash site in Stonycreek Township and talking to some of the victims’ loved ones, Gibson said.

“We connected them to the story. They were totally immersed in the story for 2½ days,” she said. “They learned about the passengers. They learned about what happened on the flight. They heard firsthand from family members what happened afterward.”

At the end of the symposium, the educators worked in teams to draft a lesson plan they could use.

Brooke Lincoski, a teacher at California Academy of Learning Charter School (grades 9-12) in California, Pa., was one of the 40 teachers who attended the Flight 93 National Memorial Educator Symposium in June. She will join the teachers again today as they were invited back to Flight 93 to attend the remembrance service. Lincoski called the symposium an “incredible” learning experience.

“I got to hear, and learn, from the family members of those lost during Flight 93,” Lincoski said. “I absolutely admire their courage, and their drive, and the strength they have. They show up every single year on 9/11..that took a lot of courage and strength, and innately, it kind of rubbed off on all of us teachers, hearing their stories, listening to them talk about them as people.”

Visuals, audio play role

South Allegheny Middle School teacher Jennifer Wachs aims to capture in her lesson the character and bravery of the people who died.

South Allegheny Middle School teacher Jennifer Wachs was one of 40 educators selected to participate in a symposium earlier this year at the Flight 93 National Memorial. Kristina Serafini / TribLive

Wachs, who teaches media literacy to sixth and seventh grade students, has been teaching about the 9/11 attacks for about two decades. Over the years, she has transitioned from teaching students the timeline of the day to helping her students put themselves in the shoes of the people who experienced Sept. 11 firsthand.

Showing photographs of the Flight 93 crash site, videos of the thick, dark smoke trailing from the World Trade Center and voicemails left by passengers for their loved ones help Wachs share the story with her students.

“In today’s fast-paced, instant news, social media feeds, I think slowing down and learning the story, hearing the story … is good for kids,” she said. “They do ground themselves. They do listen when they realize … what the day really was, what that day did and changed for all of us.”

How kids see 9/11

“Why did they want to crash into us?” Desmond Killian, 9, asked his parents as they looked around the Sept. 11 Memorial plaza in New York one recent afternoon.

“It’s some tough things to talk about,” dad Eric Killian replied.

Desmond took that in, then asked: “Which country?”

“It wasn’t so much a country,” Eric Killian said.

The questions kept coming from the fourth-grader, who said he’d heard the term “9/11” from friends but hadn’t been taught about it yet in his California school. The state recommends that all public schools hold a moment of silence, and it suggests that high schools discuss the attacks’ impact on U.S. policy and world affairs.

Another visitor, 17-year-old New Jersey high school senior Ameya Williams, had learned extensively about Sept. 11, from the missed warning signals before the attacks to rebuilding after.

Her state requires such instruction in public high schools and encourages age-appropriate instruction earlier. Plus Williams has heard stories from relatives, including her grandfather, who was commuting to work at New York’s World Trade Center when it was struck.

“I feel like understanding it is understanding what they went through,” Williams said.

MVI Staff Writer Michael Vinsick contributed to this story.