September 11th

Today has been one of those days where I feel really old.  Teaching the last three years at Cedar Ridge Academy, around this time, I could say, "9-11, where were you?" I would actually get stories.  Today in my sophomore class...I got crickets.  Some of them figured out they were like 3! Well yeah that makes sense...15-12=3 but seriously!! I am not one of those history teachers that says, "Well I was alive and I remember..." because I am NOT old enough!  Sigh...oh well I guess I am.

But I thought that I would share what we did in class today.  I didn't want to do a lot, because it feels like for these students sometimes it is a dead horse--they often want to do their "choice your topic" research paper on this/bin Laden/terrorism etc.  It fascinates them I think.  So I wanted to do something a little bit different. The site 911day.org does a service project to coincide with the day.  This year's pledge is to do a good deed.  So I challenged my students today to do a good deed for someone between now and next week's class when they will report.

To go with this challenge I found this website: http://www.tributewtc.org/programs/toolkit.html which has eight different videos about people that have different perspectives on the event.  I chose the 2nd, 4th, and 6th to show in class with the different perspectives. There is a great video from the 911day.org site here so you can show a video of people remembering where they were when 9-11 happened and what good deeds they are going to do.