Many Putnam County teachers will take time to teach about the significance of the 9/11 attacks Thursday.
Middle and High School Instructional Supervisor Bubba Winningham said schools will generally have a moment of silence to start the day. Winningham said lower grade levels may make mention of 9/11, but it is not in the standards until 11th grade.
“A lot of times, teachers will take that time to talk about it,” Winningham said. “Spend maybe a day on it with a lesson or half of a class on, you know, just to go over and talk about the impacts, you know, what that did to our country, and how we united after that.”
Winningham said teachers at the middle and high school levels are likely to have some kind of 9/11 related instruction in their plans for Thursday, even if it is not required to be taught.
No elementary and few middle school students were alive when the terrorist attach took place September 11, 2001.
Winningham said 11th grade students learn about it during a unit covering the 1980’s to the present.
“It talks a lot about the things that came out of that war, the things that came out from 9/11 and the War on Terror, and kind of the shifts the country made after that,” Winningham said. “That’s kind of where it leads up to. It talks about kind of in the 80’s with Afghanistan, and then up to the actual attacks, then again, what happened afterwards.”
Winningham said when he was a teacher, he taught about 9/11 every year. Winningham said since today’s students were not alive to witness the event, it was like when he learned about things like World War II or the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Winningham said teaching about more modern events like 9/11 is helped by modern resources.
“I know when Kennedy was assassinated we had a video of that with the Zapruder film, but I mean, you just had so much media around 9/11,” Winningham said. “It doesn’t make it easier to teach, but it gives them a perspective. Like, they get to see. They can now see what happened and the exact timing of things.”
Winningham said teaching 9/11 can help students put in perspective why other events happened. He said 9/11 serves as a starting point for the impacts since, such as the changes in airlines after the attacks. It can also help students understand why their daily lives are the way they are.
Winningham said that while people are still mourning the lives lost in the 9/11 attacks, he likes to celebrate the unity that came after the fact. Winningham said he has not seen the country band together in that way since.
“And so, I know that’s one thing our teachers are trying to convey,” Winningham said. “We can be united. We were after this event. It was a terrible, tragic event, but it united this country like I haven’t seen before.”
