Search

The class was silent as we waited for Samuel to collect himself. It was a respectful silence that happens when everyone knows something powerful is taking place. Samuel’s elbows were on his knees, his head was down. A few tears had fallen. Our chairs were placed in a circle. A sign posted on our classroom wall read, “Every person in this community is as important as every other person.” We were in the middle of our weekly class meeting, a time when we acknowledge conflicts and work to resolve them as a group. The current topic: name-calling and disrespectful speech.

How does a school community deal with the violent loss of a student? Unfortunately, this is a question my school has had to answer too often. Still, no matter how many times I’ve been through it, trying to understand my own pain while holding space for my students to feel theirs is something that pushes me beyond my capacity as a teacher.

As the country approaches the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Teaching Tolerance bloggers have written about their insights and experiences in the classroom as a result of the attacks. We offer these for your reflection and adoption.

Each year, as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I feel a twinge of trepidation. My students don’t remember that horrible day. It’s not on their radar. I struggle with balancing wanting to honor those who lost their lives and the heroes of that day with the need to respect the innocence and hope of my students. Reconciling these conflicting emotions is always tricky.

This week as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I plan to gather my third-, fourth- and fifth-graders around me. I will tell them, "Our country is a beautiful place." I’ll keep this in mind as I think of the moments when we were clearly afraid.

I had coffee with a colleague recently and we discussed plans for lessons on Sept. 11. Robin outlined her discussion and writing plan based on George Orwell’s 1984—specifically on the “Two Minutes’ Hate” he describes.

After reading a Teaching Tolerance Facebook post asking how we would be marking the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I started to think about how I would address this in my classroom. My new group of sixth-graders will be 10 and 11 years old. What they know about these events will not be from their memories but from what they have learned from their parents and teachers. And given the proximity of our school district to New York City, it is quite possible that I will have students who lost a family member on that day. However I decide to approach it in the classroom, it isn’t going to be easy.

“Man that boy booty sweaty!” The comment rang out in a room that was supposed to be silent. Although the student whose “booty” was being discussed was out of the room and seemingly unscathed by his classmate’s remarks, I knew I had to address this like any other incident of disrespect. Since there are some students (most, I’d wager), who would be made uncomfortable by this type of remark, everyone needs to know that it’s not okay to say such a thing. It’s an opportunity for me to help a teenager hone empathy into a habit.

Each spring, at the start of baseball season, fourth-graders at my school connect with Shorty, a character from Ken Mochizuki’s book Baseball Saved Us. Shorty’s a Japanese-American child who plays baseball on a makeshift field in an internment camp during World War II. Mochizuki’s consummate read-aloud story encourages a fired-up discussion in the library. Students talk about the inequities and intolerances foisted on kids and adults alike. It’s the kind of lesson that I thoroughly enjoy teaching, year after year.

While working on a project for class, a student of mine casually mentioned the names of some of my relatives. When I looked up in horror, he rattled off all of the towns in which I had ever lived. I was shaken. How did he get all this information about me? Simple. He had an app for that.