Kevin Fanning looked at the sophomore students lining the desks in front of him Friday and said, “I’m feeling old.”
Pacing in front of an empty black board, Fanning, a 30-year-old world history teacher at Bishop Guertin High School, told the students how he too was a 15-year-old sophomore at the school and watched the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks unfold on live television.
In those days, Fanning said, “All the teachers put the news on. We were watching people jump and we saw the second plane hit.”
He remembered the blue sky outside, and the windows in his Spanish class were open. Suddenly, his classmates Laura and Caroline learned their father, John Ogonowski, had been piloting the first of two airplanes that were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center twin towers. Fanning, along with the rest of the school, could hear them crying and howling in the courtyard.
Earlier that morning, Fanning and his friends bought his buddy Dan balloons and hid them in his locker. After learning about the attacks, he said, “None of us thought, ‘Oh, gee, Dan has balloons in his locker.’ ”
What seemed funny hours before, Fanning said, was no longer.
“We don’t know what is funny anymore,” he said, describing that afternoon. “The world stopped that day.”
As he told his story Friday, Fanning’s classroom grew quiet, somber. Students sat silently at their desks. It was a sign of Fanning’s lesson plan for the day playing out successfully.
“I had more of a mood that I wanted to go for,” he said in the teacher’s lounge at the end of the class period. “Normally, we laugh a lot.”
As schools across the state decide how to address the 9/11 attacks and the deaths of almost 3,000 people for the 15th anniversary, Concord High School social studies curriculum facilitator Chris Herr said he increasingly wants students to be able understand the intensity, fear and trauma caused by event.
“How the psyche of America changed that day is really important for students to understand,” Herr said. “You really have to get into the emotion of the day.”
For years, Herr said, Concord High School classes took time for students and teachers to share their personal stories about 9/11 – where they were at the time, how they felt, who they may have known in the attacks.
“It was a personal experience for everybody,” he said.
Now, Herr said, “For most of our students, it’s a historical event. You don’t have a common starting place.”
He and the other social studies teachers do their best to clarify all the facts. This year, they will address the topic with students Monday.
“They might have opinions and feelings of it, but they also might have a lot of questions,” Herr said.
At Pembroke Academy, Headmaster Paul Famulari said the fact that it’s been 15 years since that day, and today’s high school students are too young to remember – or weren’t born – has been discussed among his faculty.
“I think they collectively find it interesting this is the first year they’re talking about it in classrooms and it’s truly a historical event,” Famulari said. On Friday, he said some teachers had their students watch documentaries about 9/11 and then discuss them. Other classes took history tests on the attacks, and more faculty sent home assignments.
In addition, Famulari said the school’s curriculum has been updated over the past five to seven years to reflect how 9/11 has had a ripple effect on the United States and the world.
“There are a lot of central themes that are tied together by 9/11,” Famulari said. A civics class, he added, might discuss how the attacks led to the Patriot Act and how that’s affected the civil liberties of Americans today.
“I want 9/11 to be at the forefront at what we teach in our classes,” he said. “We want to give them context.”
At Hopkinton Middle/High School, Principal Chris Kelly said there’s no formal curriculum or class planning around the national tragedy. For the past eight years, Kelly has commemorated the day by reading the poem “We Shall Never Forget” by Alan Jankowski over the intercom. He did this again on Friday.
“It kind of sets the tone for the day,” he said. “I still think its important to – it’s the 15th anniversary – at least remember it.”
He added that the school does not specially acknowledge other anniversaries like the end of World War II or the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion.
“I think that’s probably where we’re headed,” Kelly said. “It’s more of a historical event. But I think it’s important to still acknowledge it.”
Back at Bishop Guertin High School, U.S. history teacher Todd Therrien said he wanted his students to continue to remember 9/11 – through lessons on the U.S. response, why the country was targeted, what presidential speeches were made, how the economy and military were affected – even if, going forward, they have no personal memory.
“It’s historic – it’s really the second time our nation has been attacked on its own soil besides Pearl Harbor,” Therrien said. “It’s just something I don’t think should be forgotten.”