B.A. Social Studies
Due to the chronological distance that our students have from 9/11, they often struggle to connect to that day personally. In most cases, they understand the general events surrounding the terrorist attacks and the mass number of casualties, but tend to be disconnected from the impact on individual lives and families. When I had the opportunity to study September 11th at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York with Gilder Lehrman over the summer, I focused on creating a lesson that would help my students make a more meaningful, personal, and emotional connection to the events surrounding that day. Every year our school district remembers 9/11 with a brief flag raising ceremony that always touches me and many of our faculty and staff members, but as I look around at our student body, they generally go through the motions and don’t necessarily understand the gravity and impact that the day that we are remembering had on the United States and the world. I was not directly impacted by the events that day, but watched them live from the classroom where I currently teach (second seat, second row) as a high school senior and was indirectly impacted by the economic, social, and military consequences of the attack on the country. It is the central historical event in my lifetime and the one that shook the world. It’s almost cliche to say that the world isn’t and never will be the same as before that day, but the older I get, the more I understand that statement. Spending five days in New York only enhanced my curiosity and emotional connection to that day. My most significant takeaways from my time spent at the memorial and museum were the number of names engraved into the memorial and the sheer size of the site and footprint of the World Trade Center. I searched for a way to help my students understand the scope of the attack in terms of the material (the twin towers and other buildings) and immaterial (the lives lost on that day). Our students are often introduced to film footage and summaries of the events of that day, but in most circumstances are not connected to it with any emotion. I grappled over the first three to four days with how to communicate the sheer size of the terrorist attacks while portraying each of the 2,996 people murdered that day as individuals. One of the centerpieces of the museum is the Ladder Company 3 fire truck. It is a unique piece that offers so many different interpretations of the event. Size, individuality, sacrifice and randomness each come to mind when reflecting on the artifact as it sits in the void between the footprints of the towers on the lowest floor (bedrock) of the museum. The massive truck suffered major damage, proving that the event was one of large scale. The question about who was on or travelled to the Trade Center on it also comes to mind immediately as they were taking significant risk to save lives. Finally, the truck can be divided into two segments, the rear, where there is moderate damage, and the front, which is absolutely destroyed and is recognizable only as large mangled pieces of metal, showing the randomness of the damage as a result of the attacks. As I walked through the museum multiple times, this piece continued to resonate with me and I kept coming back to it and eventually decided to turn it into an activity for my students to experience. I photographed the truck--not from the typical perspective of taking in the whole, but in segments from one of its rear wheels and tires, then consecutively backing away slowly providing more information to my students for them to analyze until I reached the line between the moderate damage in the rear and complete destruction in the front. These photos were going to be released to my students in the same way in the classroom activity. The activity was still missing the personal connection that I felt with the truck though. In order to find that meaning for myself and my students, I made my way to the memorial and found the names of each firefighter from Ladder Company 3 that died sacrificing their lives in order to save others. The classroom activity began and ended with these photos. When displaying the photos of the engraved names in the memorial, I provided no background, I simply asked my students to find a sheet of paper and tell me what they saw and next, to tell me what they thought. Most of them stated, “names,” then after being asked to provide more detail, they added a bit--”engraved names,” “somebody being remembered for some reason,” and others noticed the drops of water on the pieces of stone. Simply stated though, those names meant nothing to them at the beginning of the activity. The next photo reveals only one of the rear wheels and tires on the truck. It is a bit obvious that it’s a fire truck, leading students to make some basic assumptions. There is very little damage to this tire, only a patch and a small bit of damage in the right side of the photo reveal that there might be something out of the ordinary taking place. The second photo releases the second wheel and tire--it shows more damage as the tire is flat and the wheel damaged. After each of these photos are released the questions “what do you see?” and “what do you think/wonder?” were asked to the students who documented their answers on their paper throughout the entire activity. The next two photos reveal the rear half of the truck slowly. The first displaying the back ⅔ of it, and the second showing the entirety of the rear half of the truck. It is evident at this point that there was major damage to the truck. Students were then asked the same questions as above, but then an additional question, “what would your experience have been if you were here at the moment that this happened?” Then to clarify, “what would you be seeing, smelling, hearing, touching?” Finally, the students were instructed to draw or explain what they think the front end of the truck looks like. It is typically completely different to what the actual information released to them is in the next photo. In the final photo, the entirety of the fire truck was released to the students. In one class, there were gasps, and I think this makes it hit home that the damage was major and they begin asking themselves about the firefighters and making that connection. The same questions were asked, including the one about the experience. To drive the point home, I asked them to compare their experiences between the front and rear of the truck and in another to put themselves at the rear of the truck with their best friend standing at the front of the truck--this drives home the point of the randomness of the events that took place that day. If they were standing near the rear, they would have had a decent chance of living, but would have probably been injured, but if they were only three feet away, those chances of living were greatly diminished. After students were given a moment to process the entire scene, the photos of the names were then presented to them again and they were asked, “now what do these names mean to you?” This was one of the more emotional days in my ten years as a classroom teacher. I think that if you put yourself through the process honestly, you will feel the same way that they did. I was so proud of my students for working through the process and noticing the details, then processing what they felt afterward in a blog post where they shared their experiences throughout this activity. It created an atmosphere of curiosity about the event and we decompressed by opening the floor to questions about the day, the memorial, and the museum. Overall, the activity accomplished the goals of providing personal insight and emotion to the event and changed many perspectives on the events surrounding 9/11. Student Blog Posts: Reflections on 9/11 ActivityIn September, I was fortunate enough to be chosen for and attend “A Residential Weekend at Mount Vernon” for teachers from Missouri and Kentucky. I have participated in many professional development opportunities in the past and this one is at the top of the list. It was only four days, but was well organized, the group of teachers in attendance were top notch and passionate, and the scholars were professional historians AND passionate educators--a unique and integral combination for a program like this. The education team at the Washington Library does a terrific job providing a program that balances content with pedagogy--something that is often neglected at professional development opportunities which usually focus on one or the other. This post will focus on the same and is the basis for a presentation that I will co-present at the Missouri Council for the Social Studies Conference in February. I have also had a student-teacher this semester, but have stayed as busy as ever restructuring my government course using Project/Problem Based pedagogy throughout and working to become a stronger leader in and out of my district through this blog and the creation of this website. Along the way, I was able to go to the eighth grade because of a welcoming colleague to present a lesson on what I learned at Mount Vernon. As a teacher that has only junior and senior level courses this is a little intimidating, but I was excited to get out of my classroom and present the content that I gained from my time my experience. One of the key ideas that I took away from Mount Vernon was that there was more to George Washington than the typical person thinks about. To prove the point, ask yourself the question: “Who was George Washington?” Your answer? First United States president… General… The guy on the dollar bill… Maybe even the president of the Constitutional Convention… Before my experience at Mount Vernon, this was pretty much all that I ever thought of Washington, and I am actually quite ashamed as a historian that I would be so shallow. I asked the eighth graders this same question with predictable results. Here are some of the “faces” of Washington that the average person misses: landowner (THOUSANDS of acres), slave owner (a complex topic), westward expansionist (investor in a company to build a canal connecting the Potomac to the Mississippi), land speculator, technology aficionado (I’m convinced that he would have owned the latest iPhone for the sake of organization and efficiency), mill owner, distillery owner, progressive farmer, and one who valued education. Our eighth grade teacher does a great job teaching students to work through primary sources lending perfectly to what I wanted to do. I researched and found documents that displayed all of the different facets that I wanted to expose those students to and narrowed them down to key excerpts for them to digest. I annotated them with questions with the intent of teaching students the value of jotting notes while reading in order to analyze and understand text (See below or the "Identity of George Washington" tab). I was impressed with the ability of these students to take transcripts of letters from Washington as well as his Last Will and Testament and summarize the information. From that point, students completed a “George Washington was….” statement and had to cite their evidence from the readings as justification. In the end, they were given a coloring page portrait of Washington, and asked to fill in the background in a way that depicted his identity based on their assigned document. Obviously, the students seemed to get into this part and eventually, they presented their information to their classmates as the basis for other discussions about Washington and what the documents could tell us about the United States during his time. Student Examples: "Based on the primary source, George Washington was a/an....."The most impressive part from my perspective was how students were able to have discussions about some interesting topics. Slavery is a key topic that is also difficult to teach and for students to understand. The students that had the “slaveowner” document wrestled with the idea that Washington freed his slaves in his will, but not during his life. Others also saw that he was concerned for their health and education and most understood that his reasons were for the efficiency of Mount Vernon. They concluded that he was “a good slave owner,” “a hypocrite slaveowner,” and “a nice slave owner.” All of these conclusions led to interesting dialogue and class discussion based on the idea that "good" and "slave owner" don't typically fit together. Finally, I think that students really understood Washington’s identity as savvy business person and entrepreneur, a point that I really wanted to get across. When you discuss that he had a mill and distillery so that he could sell finished products along with diverse investments in raw materials and crops as well as progressive farming techniques it really opens students’ eyes to who he was as a private person. In the end, I think the students really grasped the idea that along with being the first president, war hero, and great leader, Washington was also very normal in the fact that he was a business person trying to make a profit and had other “regular” identities. This focus is important when looking at American History as a whole. Consensus historians often neglect many of these facets and and many of the Founding Fathers lose their human qualities. A lesson like this really helps students to understand that the founders of the United States were not gods, but real people with real issues, struggles, successes, and failures and allows them to connect and realize this fact. I think that’s key to getting students to understand and appreciate history as a story of individual experiences that culminate into the big picture. Personifying a figure with the historical stature like George Washington adds to their understanding of history and hopefully adds to student engagement and interest in the field. Hopefully this post will help you implement a little bit of "G.W." into your courses as a man of his time and a complex figure in the history of the United States. Lesson Documents:
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AuthorBrian Anton currently serves the Purdy R-II (Missouri) School District as the 7-12 Principal after working in the PK-12 Assistant Principal and Athletic Director roles for two years. In the 12 years prior to moving into administration, he served as an award-winning high school social studies teacher. Archives
September 2018
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