September 11th - Class Recap

This is part of N591UA, which operate United Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001, and was hijacked for possible use against the White House. Instead, a passenger revolt forced down the plane into a field in Pennsylvania. A part of my 9/11 story is that I once flew on that exact same plane, from Portland to Chicago in 1996. Check out my FlightMemory map of lifetime flights.

Hello wonderful students,

Today, I tried to make sure everyone learned about the basics of the major events of September 11th, 2001, which happened 13 years ago. Sometimes, I just want to focus on the moment! Here's the class recap for today:

Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 6: I can demonstrate an understanding of the characteristics of locations and regions.
Knowledge LT 7: I can demonstrate the ability to use geographic tools.

Soundtrack: “Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day. Selected because we discussed the events of September 11th, 2001 today in class. Lyrics (which some may argue directly relate to the War on Terror) here.

AGENDA 9/11/14:
PRIDE Lesson
News Brief
September 11th 2001
Fear

Homework: Read the blog! Next news brief: Isaiah.

PRIDE Lesson: For today's PRIDE lesson, I wrote KINDNESS on the board and asked the class to brainstorm what the definition of kindness is. We shared out and I wrote the responses on the board, and then provided the following definition: "Kindness is an intrinsic quality of the heart expressed through an act of benevolence reflecting care and good will for self and others."

Next, I showed a video that was an example of Embracing Community. We talked about times in which we have embraced community and been kind to each other. To finish, I asked everyone to: 1) Plan and commit a random act of kindness, and 2) Commit to stepping up if a situation arises that calls for embracing community.

Thank you for your focus and work with the PRIDE lessons! PRIDE is a huge part of our community here at Westview.

News Brief: Olivia brought in this article for her news brief today: NPR.org - Underneath Stonehenge, 'A Map Of What Was There In The Past'. We talked a little bit about the mystery that is Stonehenge - there are so many different theories about what it was for! Certainly a cool place.

Here I am at Stonehenge in 2007, when I was studying abroad in London!

Thanks, Olivia! Isaiah was the lucky winner of the random popsicle stick draw for the next news brief..

September 11th, 2001: To start this section, I asked students to do a free write for about 5 minutes on the following questions:

What do you know about September 11th, 2001? What have you heard about it? Do you remember anything? What have you learned before, in class, or from parents? How did the U.S. Government change after 9/11?

After the free write time, we shared responses as a class and I told my story about September 11th. I was starting my Sophomore year at Wilson High School in Portland. It was definitely a day I will remember for the rest of my life. To drive home the point as to what the day was like, I showed this video in class, which was a timeline of the day:

From there, I moved on to discussing how September 11th, 2001 came about.

Fear: We talked about in class about FEAR. To start to look at how fear played a role after September 11th, I showed a couple of videos:

This is United States Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing the United Nations about the "weapons of mass destruction" that the U.S. government thought was in Iraq. It turned out that there were not any such weapons.

This video contains a montage of President George W. Bush and many of the key figures in his government repeating words in speeches that sounded pretty scary.

The last bit to class was another free write. This time, it was about fear in our lives. 

The prompt was: write about a time in which you experienced fear and how you felt. What did you want to do in that moment?

After writing and sharing in partners, I asked for volunteers to share with the class. It is nice to be able to look back on scary moments in life and laugh, or just be thankful that we escaped out of it. It was also good to hear about how fear makes us feel - anxious, wanting to do anything to escape, and not wanting to experience it again.

I wanted to make the connection between the fear much of America felt after 9/11. In fact, one of the ways that the government might have helped keep people fearful (or ready) is by making a threat level color coded system.:

In the entire history of the threat level system (which ended under President Obama), the threat level never went below Elevated - meaning we were supposed to be at "significant risk of terrorist attacks," constantly.

That was it for the day! Next class, I really want to make sure that we dive in on making our maps. They have been ready to go the last two classes, but we just haven't made it there yet! Soon!