Principal Clementine Homesley was in a staff meeting with the special education team when "the school shook with a jolt." It was September 11, the day terrorists crashed fuel-laden jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. Homesley was at work just across the river from the Pentagon in M.V. Leckie Elementary School in Washington, D.C. "There was no preparation for this—war was going on outside the walls of the school," she says.
For Homesley and others, the tragedies had a personal impact: the attacks claimed the lives of Leckie student Curtis Brown, veteran teacher Hilda Taylor, and school parent and Pentagon employee Marsha Ratchford. Brown and Taylor were passengers on one ill-fated jet with other local students and teachers bound for Los Angeles to take part in a geology field trip sponsored by the National Geographic Society.
Weeks later, Homesley admitted the school is still grieving over losing members of its community to such inexplicable violence. Yet, she adds, "we will remain intact as working professionals devoted to the goals and tasks of education" to honor Taylor, Brown, and Ratchford. "When educators say 'children first,' Hilda was a pioneer," says Homesley.
Leckie's students have looked to their principal and teachers to model "strength and composure." The school has also made use of grief counselors and taken time to talk and reflect "a lot," says Homesley. This is exactly what schools and families should be doing, say experts: Giving students a forum for expressing their emotions during such crises, whether they feel sadness, anger, or confusion, and allowing them to talk about what they have seen or heard in the news. But students also need calm adults giving reassurance of their own safety.
All schools were affected by the terrorist attacks, whether directly like Leckie Elementary School or indirectly through watching television images of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and hearing of the tremendous loss of life. The effects of the surprise attacks still resonate throughout the United States, and a number of educators are urging teachers to draw some long-lasting lessons from the events of September 11 and afterwards.
Beyond Recovery
In the weeks following the disasters, the public focused on positive responses—the heroism and determination of rescue workers, the generosity of blood donors, the solidarity the public showed by displaying the American flag. Students wrote thank-you letters to fire fighters, sent heartfelt e-mails to fellow students in New York schools, raised thousands of dollars for the Red Cross and the relief effort, and held memorial services to honor those who died. But such civic generosity shouldn't be episodic, say advocates of social and emotional learning.
"We must educate children for civic participation at every level, so that they and we come to see more committed, generous, and heroic actions as a part of everyday life, not just a reaction to crisis," says Rutgers University psychology professor Maurice Elias in the Sept. 26 issue of Education Week.
Elias, who is affiliated with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, adds that "the other side" of learning—those teachable skills such as knowing and managing emotions, recognizing strengths, respecting others, and building relationships—involves educating students "in sound character" and giving them "the ability to see themselves and their learning as positive resources for their families, schools, workplaces, and communities."
Teachers should help students foster a sense of empathy, understanding, and caring for all people they come into contact with, says Frank Zenere, a school psychologist for Miami-Dade Public Schools' department of crisis management and spokesperson for the National Association of School Psychologists.
A new understanding of others "leads to breaking the cycle of intolerance," and leads to discussions among those who have differences, says Zenere. In the wake of the attacks "I'm seeing lots of honest, open dialogue about why such hatred for the United States exists in some parts of the world," he adds. "We need to look for the deeper meaning behind these differences."
Freedom and Responsibility
Even as the government moves to restrict some freedoms to improve national security—increased searches of personal belongings at airports and sporting events, for example—experts say that students should be taught to understand and exercise with responsibility their rights of freedom of religion, speech, and the press guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
"Schools are the only place they learn to apply the understanding of the principles of the Constitution. If schools don't do this, our country won't be the envy of the world for its open society. If people learn the value of their rights, they help sustain and expand them so society is more just and more free. There's still lots of injustice in the United States," says Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.
"In the wake of school violence, policies that restrict students more are understandable, but they don't work. Schools have moved to more of a prison model instead of a laboratory of freedom," says Haynes.
"Restriction deepens the alienation. It makes students less interested in being engaged in their community. It shuts them up, but it doesn't give students a voice," explains Haynes.
Haynes contrasts the responses of two California schools in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. One high school "bumbled around with a loudspeaker announcement and then teachers went on with their classes." Because of their own lack of knowledge, teachers couldn't answer students' questions about Islam, and the climate of "getting on with the work" didn't encourage dealing with students' emotions. "Students were very frustrated and angered by that," says Haynes.
The other school was well prepared in teaching students about rights and responsibilities in civics courses, so it could help students deal with the event on a social and emotional level. The district superintendent had called all principals together the day after the attack and encouraged them to talk to students about tolerance and respect. Because world religions are taught as part of the geography curriculum, students already had an understanding of Islam as a religion that would not condone terrorist attacks.
A school promoting understanding of the First Amendment "takes religious liberty seriously and takes teaching about religion seriously. We have national guidelines that support doing it," says Haynes, referring to Religious Expression in the Public Schools, issued by the U.S. Department of Education.
Students should be able to "speak religiously or not"—not only after a crisis like the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks but any time, says Haynes. "Good character is impossible without the use of moral language—a way to speak about what is right and wrong. But students ought to have the proper training. It can't be superficial," says Haynes.
And moral discourse can't end with conversation, he adds. "Students have to understand the good and do the good."
The Long Term
Given that many young people are calling the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the defining event of their generation, it should be no surprise that when Pope John Paul II met with the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican on Sept. 13, two days after the attacks, he made an appeal to the youth of the country.
In a formal address, the pope told ambassador James Nicholson, "Young people are surely your nation's greatest treasure. That is why they urgently need an all-around education, which will enable them to reject cynicism and selfishness and to grow into their full stature as informed, wise, and morally responsible members of the community.
"At the beginning of the new millennium, young people must be given every opportunity to take up their role as craftsmen of a new humanity, where brothers and sisters—members all of the same family—are able at last to live in peace."
Part of that ability to build peace and understanding globally depends on what today's students learn in the classroom and what they do in society, because the rest of the world is watching the United States, says Haynes. "It's not just for our own sakes, but it's for the world family," he insists. "We need to model that it is possible for a nation with extraordinary diversity to build a society that is free and just."
