WASHINGTON – Baltimore County school officials want their students to remember the Sept. 11 attacks, not relive them.
So in most of the county’s 162 public schools, television sets will be silenced Wednesday. Instead of inundating students with repeated footageof planes crashing into the World Trade Center, teachers will readprepared statements and most social studies classes will use the attacksas a starting point for the day’s lesson.
It is one of a variety of approaches planned by schools across thestate to mark the anniversary.
Drawing on a wealth of local and national resources on the topic, some schools have planned elaborate assemblies lauding heroism and patriotismwhile others will mention the tragedy briefly and then go about businessas usual.
The Maryland State Department of Education has not mandated astatewide curriculum for the day, but it has guidelines on its web sitefor teaching the highly emotional subject. It advises educators tomonitor their students’ feelings and behavior and provide appropriatecounseling when necessary.
“Take time to listen to and talk with children about their feelings,”the guide advises. “Reassure them that the school is a safe place to be.”
Recognizing the range of emotions that will be stirred up, thedepartment suggests teachers “be realistic about curriculum demands andassignments” and “be aware of and immediately stop all forms of bullyingand harassment.”
School officials say the tragedy should be addressed on anage-appropriate basis. Kindergarten and elementary school students, manyof whom are not old enough to vividly remember or understand whathappened, will be encouraged to focus on the unity and togetherness seenin the last year.
“We’re not going to be talking about terrorists or anything that will bring about fear in the children,” said Michael Kline, principal of theRonald McNair Elementary School in Germantown.
The Montgomery County school is planning an hour-long assembly forgrades three through five that will include speeches by school and countyofficials and patriotic songs. Winners of an essay contest that askedstudents to define a hero and an American will read their responses.
At Mount Savage School in Allegany County, about 30 miles from where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field, all studentswill observe a moment of silence in the morning, but only the middleschool students will be required to have a Sept. 11-based lesson.
“Each teacher will develop their own plans, based on what they knowabout their kids,” said Gary Llewellyn, the school’s principal.
“Lesson plans will not focus on who’s to blame, but more on the effortto support the families who were involved and understand the country’sreaction,” he said.
Discussion of the event will be more fact-based and detailed at thehigh school level, school officials said.
At Perryville High School in Cecil County, all students will see a multimedia presentation of events preceding and following the attacks. Government classes will focus on the constitutional rights of individualsheld in connection with the attacks. World history teachers will givebackground on the worldwide political impact of the event.
In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about how teachersshould address the issue of blame. While the U.S. government has longsaid that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were behind the attacks, someeducators are concerned that a discussion about blame could lead tostereotyping and put some students in an uncomfortable situation.
“We allow for a variety of different viewpoints,” said CharlesHerndon, a Baltimore County schools spokesman. “I’m not sure blame issomething we want to assign, but we do want our students to considerissues raised by this day and come to their own conclusions.”
Sue Mabry, a fourth-grade teacher at McNair Elementary, has alreadyhad to deal with the delicate issue of assigning blame when her studentsask who is responsible for the attacks.
“We don’t associate any religious or political connotations to this,” Mabry said. “We just call them bad guys, like in the movies.”
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