LEWISTON — When Pat Blais started teaching about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks a decade ago, his high school seniors often shared their own memories of that day. Where they were. What they saw. Who they knew who’d died.

The historic event felt personal, traumatic.

“This is the JFK (assassination) for my generation,” said Blais, who teaches U.S. government at Lewiston High School.

As years passed, students’ Sept. 11 reflections have gotten more vague. Today, they’re all but gone.

This year’s high school seniors were toddlers in 2001.

“I don’t know if it becomes more important (to teach about Sept. 11),” Blais said, “but it opens their eyes more.” 

As the nation marks the 15th anniversary of the attacks with memorials and moments of silence, Maine teachers are marking it their own way: with lessons.

“From my department’s perspective, we all talk about it, definitely, because it’s history,” said John Pinto, chairman of the social studies department at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in South Paris. “We saw something dramatic that happened to our nation, so we’ve got to keep it alive, keep kids fully informed of what happened. You don’t want it forgotten.”

Years ago, teachers could largely cover Sept. 11 with class discussions. Today, they rely heavily on photos, news stories, video clips and documentaries to tell the story.

Shane Gilbert, a social studies teacher at Auburn Middle School, works particularly hard to immerse his students in the emotions of that day. At 12 and 13 years old, none of his seventh-graders had even been born in 2001.

“They don’t appreciate the chaos and the not knowing and the planes being grounded and the oh-my-god-this-building-just-collapsed. The awestruck-ness of what we all experienced by watching it,” he said.

So Gilbert creates a kind of simulation of that day using video footage from the time, including shots of people jumping from the towers in a desperate attempt to save their lives. Students hear the goodbye phone calls victims made to their families and watch eye-witness interviews.   

“I think it’s important for kids to realize that this is what adults were experiencing in this time. And kids. Let’s face it, TVs were on at school, TVs were on at work, TVs were (on) around the globe,” he said. “It wasn’t just New York City and Washington; this was a global event. And it played out live right in front of us.”

Gilbert’s Sept. 11 lesson is so intense that he asks parents if they want their kids to skip it. Of his 90 students each year, only two or three ask for an alternative assignment.

A mile down the road, Edward Little High School global studies teacher Erin Towns has been weaving the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks into her lesson plans since  they happened 15 years ago. Her high-schoolers today — many of whom were babies in 2001 — get an extra assignment: Ask an adult about that day.

“It starts the conversation at home,” Towns said.

Like many teachers, she also shares her own Sept. 11 story. It begins with a student running into her study hall and yelling that the United States was under attack.

“As I passed our media center, I saw a bunch of my teaching friends crowded around a television,” she said. “When I walked into the library at that moment, the plane hit the towers. Everybody in the library just gasped or screamed. I would have to put that up there to being one of the most stunning moments of my life.”

Towns teaches about the terrorist attacks every year in part to keep alive the memory of the nearly 3,000 people who were killed. She also wants students to understand that this single, historic day changed the world they live in — and that its ramifications continue today.

“The way that the United States views the world, the way that countries interact, still very much center on that (day),” she said.

Sept. 11 can be harder to teach than other topics. It’s often emotional, for both teachers and students. It can be difficult to navigate the political issues, especially during this politically divisive election year.

And it can be challenging to talk with kids about the religious aspects of the attacks — the terrorists were associated with militant Islamic group al-Qaida — especially in classes with students who are Muslim.

“The typical Muslim student, east African student, that we have at the high school is relatively receptive to it,” said Blais at Lewiston High School, which has a large percentage of Muslim students. “Every year, we get into a discussion about whether groups like ISIS are really Muslims or not. And that becomes a whole new bag to open.”

Blais covers Sept. 11 as part of a larger unit on terrorism. He is careful to point out that terrorism and extremism aren’t limited to a single religion.

“There are terrorist groups around the world, and have been in the history of the world, that are not Islamic,” Blais said. “We bring up some of those also and discuss those, say this isn’t necessarily a religious issue as much as it is a group of people that (use) their religion to justify specific actions.”

Some teachers spend an hour or two covering Sept. 11. Others spend days on it. 

This year, Blais will talk about Sept. 11 with six of his government classes. Each group will watch the same CNN video of that day.

Blais has seen the footage 75 times since he started teaching about Sept. 11 a decade ago.

“I still watch it every time,” he said. “I don’t turn away from it.”

ltice@sunjournal.com

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