Arizona Tribune - Educators keep 9/11 memory alive for next generation, 25 years on

Twenty-five years after the seismic events of September 11, 2001, an army of educators are working to fill gaps in the knowledge of a generation of youngsters like Avena who were not born when the United States came under attack.

There is no standardized US national teaching of 9/11, when 2,977 people died including the passengers and crew of four hijacked planes, victims in New York's Twin Towers, firefighters, and personnel at the Pentagon.

Only a handful of US states mandate teaching of it, leading to a patchwork of different content and approaches across the country, so volunteers, teachers and charities are stepping up.

At Wantagh High School, in a Long Island community that was home to a dozen 9/11 victims, teachers wanted to organize a trip to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City to help impart the enormity of the attacks.

"Our students were learning about 9/11 in the same manner that our students are learning about World War II and Pearl Harbor, in the sense that they were not alive for those events," said Wantagh High School Principal Paul Guzzone.

"You can't compare" the experience of visiting the site with just hearing stories in the classroom or seeing videos online, the 41-year-old Guzzone said.

Avena visited the memorial last year and said he was profoundly affected.

"I have really good family friends that were first responders in the 9/11 attacks, and you hear stories about it," he told AFP.

"You never really realize how real it is, and how the feeling is, until you're on site in the memorial."

- 'The sacrifice' -

To cover the costs of visiting the National 9/11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan, the charitable foundation of actor Gary Sinise stepped in to back the trips, going on to support fundraising efforts for annual visits, and a memorial at the school.

The foundation runs a World War II educational program, taking Wantagh students to a museum in New Orleans about that conflict, before branching into 9/11 education.

"There's teachers coming out of college that don't have a memory of 9/11, and so it just kind of makes it important that we tell this story and educate as many people as we can, while we can, and while they're here," said James Ravella, executive vice president at the foundation.

"That (sense of) speaking from experience is fading out every year," said school principal Guzzone.

As well as the Wantagh partnership, the foundation now offers teacher development programs in partnership with the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, as well as running trips to both the Pentagon and Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania with other schools.

United Flight 93 was one of four hijacked jets and was reportedly headed to the US Capitol when passengers and crew onboard fought the hijackers, before it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all aboard.

In addition to field trips, there are also digital teaching resources about the attacks, such as "OOPA's World of Words," an online series of videos to build vocabulary and social literacy for younger readers.

The titular character OOPA, played by teacher Rupa Mehta, explains words like "anniversary," "emergency," "hero," "memory," and "service," to children as young as five, in a module called Remembering September 11th, which was created in partnership with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF).

The project has resulted in five clips featuring accounts from those touched by the attacks, including an 11-year-old girl whose grandfather responded to the attack on the Pentagon.

Mehta said she was inspired to create the series by the experience of another young girl.

"A couple of years ago, I was actually just watching the news on September 11th and I was really dumbfounded by this girl and she just was so sad that it wasn't taught in her school," said Mehta.

"She just felt like her family's legacy, the contribution, the sacrifice wasn't acknowledged. And it was in that moment... I thought that we could lend a hand and be a powerful potential partner."

The NFFF's chief executive Victor Stagnaro said the resource would be "available for generations to come" and that 9/11 first responders were grateful to be able to share it "with their grandchildren while they're still around."

O.Gutierrez--AT