RAHWAY, N.J.- The video of the flaming Twin Towers flickered on the classroom TV screen last week, its time-worn images already indelible in the minds of the Rahway High School students.

Then teacher John Odin stopped the film and redirected the discussion from how students initially felt on Sept. 11, 2001, to what broader historical lessons America has learned since the attack.

The conversation flowed freely in Odin’s contemporary America class. It touched on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – something senior Breanne Flynn could relate to with two brothers serving in the U.S. Marines. Then talk moved on to whether America’s “golden door” is still open to immigrants.

“With all our prejudices, especially of Middle Easterners,” said junior Justin Latham, “the door may still be open, but there’s a guard there now.”

Six years after the terrorist attacks, lessons about that day taught in high school social studies classes have subtly evolved. Carole DeVito, social studies supervisor at Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, likened it to the way lessons on the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed as the nation moved into the 1950s.

“The older the event, it becomes less of a memorial and more a lesson,” she said.

She and others described how teachers have felt more confident to talk about the attacks of Sept. 11, especially in the larger context of the Iraq War, Middle East politics and religion, as well as America’s place in the world – past and present.

Sometimes, though, taking on such hot-button topics can cause controversy.

Parsippany High School teacher Joseph Kyle learned that firsthand two years ago when he led his class in a mock “war crimes” trial over President Bush’s push for the Iraq War.

The lesson drew criticism from some politicians and conservative talk shows and blogs, but it ultimately won praise in the local community and elsewhere for the depth and balance of student discussions.

Two years later, Kyle said Sept. 11 has taken on even greater importance in almost any classroom discussion, from his elective government class to the mandated American history.

“The actual event is probably not talked about as much as the repercussions and the context of it,” he said. “It has become so much a part of who we are as a nation that it seeps into everything we do.”

Still, he and others stressed, the way Sept. 11 lessons are handled vary by teacher and, certainly, by school – particularly if a community suffered casualties that day.

Some families that lost loved ones in the World Trade Center attacks plan to release a set of classroom lessons and materials that will combine both history and civics.

“We want to give kids practical lessons on how to be effective citizens,” said Anthony Gardner, who lost a brother in the Sept. 11 attacks and now leads the World Trade Center United Family Group. “We want to harness the story of 9/11 and its aftermath to engage high school students, to inspire them.”

One problem is that when the Sept. 11 anniversary arrives, many classes in U.S. history are barely beyond teaching about the Mayflower.

But that hasn’t prevented many teachers like Steve Santucci, a history instructor at Mendham High School in the West Morris regional district, from using the date to broach deeper discussions.

His U.S. History II class wasn’t yet out of the 19th century last Thursday, but Santucci said a lesson on American imperialism in the 1890s brought natural questions from students about the country’s sometimes precarious standing in the world today.

Such controversial talk has its perils, and Santucci said he might have been nervous a few years ago dealing with this in a community with close ties to the tragedy. But he now welcomes student efforts to put the attacks in historical context – on one condition: They back it up with facts.

“You can get them very passionate on this, and you want all the opinions brought in. As long as you back them up,” he said.

Rebecca Lucas was in her first week of teaching at Hackettstown High School when the Twin Towers were struck. She remembers juggling the pressures of the day with her own worries about friends and family.

But as the years have passed, she has noticed student memories of that day gradually fading. Students in her U.S. history classes this year were 10 or 11 in 2001.

Talking about the attacks was more difficult when they were fresh and she was in her early years of teaching, said Lucas. “But now I definitely approach it differently, a little more confidently, and a little more comfortably in dealing with controversial issues.”

General social studies curricula have changed dramatically in the last few years, as well. There is greater attention to smaller global conflicts, terrorism and “nonstate” combatants. Also, the Middle East has become a staple in the study of world history.

“We took out Japan and put in the Middle East,” said DeVito, the supervisor at Dwight-Englewood School. “After all, you have to make choices. And that’s definitely in response to 9/11.”

At Rahway High School, Odin said he still works hard to stress the human cost of Sept. 11.

He was an officer in the Union County prosecutor’s office at the time of the attacks, he said, and for him the tragedy is still all too real.

“We were going to funerals for weeks,” Odin recalled. “It is less of a memorial now, but I also believe we have to teach more than just an examination of the historical events. It is more than just a date on a timeline.”