From Fairborn to Springboro, school districts throughout the Miami Valley will mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in a number of ways: holding patriotic assemblies, teaching from textbooks that have been updated to reflect that important day in the country’s history and by bringing that history to life through the voices of those who remember.
‘A teaching point’
Ten years later, Sept. 11 now makes up a substantial part of the curriculum at Springboro High School.
“From a teaching point of view, you can’t rely upon the emotion of the day,” Principal Ron Malone said. “The students don’t identify with that emotion because they were too young to feel it.” He said the focus is on how that event redirected the nation in terms of security and the beginning of the war on terror.
“Our nation is a different nation today in so many ways because of what happened,” Malone said.
Ohio Department of Education spokesman Patrick Gallaway said “school districts are at liberty to instruct, create lesson plans and memorials” any way they see fit. However, the department strongly urged all school districts to plan some type of recognition of Patriot Day, the annual observance to remember those who died or were injured in the attacks.
“Schools also may want to consider having older students interview adults about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the resulting political, national security and economic challenges the U.S. has faced,” states an ODE communication sent to school districts.
Ten years later, high school history books include details about the horrors of that day and what happened in the years since.
“So much of our country is defined by that day,” said Robert Banks, chairman of Fairborn High School’s social studies department. Banks had input in the selection of the textbooks, which contain images of the burning towers, as well as information about the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the color-coded warning system and the security upgrades at airports that impact travelers.
But the passage of time has also meant some references to the World Trade Center have vanished from other textbooks after the 110-story towers disappeared from the skyline.
A Twin Tower builder
West Carrollton High School math and physics teacher Joe Lipinski keeps a copy of an older geometry textbook that featured the twin towers on the cover and contained problems for students to calculate involving the height and structure of the buildings.
“In the new edition, they took that out,” said Lipinski, who assisted electricians during the construction of the World Trade Center in the early 1970s during a summer apprenticeship program while he was a student at the University of Dayton. He makes a point of having his students still do the calculations on the World Trade Center and about his experience working on towers he calls “my twins.”
“I was immensely proud of it at the time,” he said, recalling how he watched their collapse on a TV in his classroom.
Stacey Frey, a second-grade teacher at Fairborn Primary School, said it can be challenging for teachers to capture what happened that day without scaring young children.
Untouched chapel
Today, she will read to them “The Little Chapel That Stood,” which she called a wonderful, uplifting story about 9/11 “that tells it like it is. I don’t believe in lying to the children.”
She has been approaching 9/11 this way ever since she visited ground zero a few years ago and, afterward, wandered into nearby St. Paul’s Chapel, which had been home to an eight-month volunteer relief effort after the terrorist attacks. While other buildings near the towers were damaged by their collapse, the chapel was untouched.
When she reads the book aloud, her students learn about the two planes hitting the towers, as well as the heroism of passengers aboard Flight 93, which later went down in a Pennsylvania field. Frey said she doesn’t “go over the gory details” and wants the children to take away a positive message about the nation’s spirit and Americans’ pride.
In Rigano’s Valley Elementary classroom, the third-graders will be visited today by Beavercreek firefighter Dave Young who went to ground zero with Ohio Task Force One and later will connect by phone with Chief Frank Leeb, a New York firefighter who had been with Squad 270 that Rigano’s class adopted 10 years ago.
In the spring of 2002, after they finished clearing ground zero, Leeb and two other firefighters flew to Beaverceek to thank the class for their letters and care packages that provided a sort of therapy during that difficult time.
He presented the class with an American flag that flew over the fire department’s command post at ground zero — and gave to Rigano the cross made from a beam of the fallen South Tower.
Beavercreek High School graduate Robby Tobey, who was in Rigano’s class in 2001-02, is now 18 and a freshman finance major at the Ohio State University.
Tobey said he watched a “pretty graphic” video showing the collapsed World Trade Center during his senior government class and said it was the first time he really grasped the magnitude of what happened that day.
He said it was difficult to watch but he learned something valuable in the process.
Not only was he able to “create my own thoughts and opinion” of what happened instead of relying on what others told him, Tobey said he also got “a better understanding of the pain people went through.”
As for watching the video, he said, “I felt like it did more good than harm.”
Contact this reporter at mkissell@DaytonDailyNews. com or (937) 225-2094.
About the Author