For a new generation of Cincinnati teachers, 9/11 is history
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The Tribute in Light is tested over One World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Photo: Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images
Lindsey King, 36, can still tell you what she ate for breakfast on Sept. 11, 2001, while Nolan Polk, 23, wasn't even born yet.
Why it matters: Now they're both responsible for teaching it to Cincinnati Public Schools students.
- Twenty-five years later, 9/11 is crossing a generational line in America's classrooms as younger educators teach an event they didn't experience.
The big picture: King sees that divide firsthand at Aiken New Tech High School.
- She remembers the attacks almost frame by frame — her clothes, classmates and teachers crying as they rolled a TV into her sixth-grade classroom.
- Her 23-year-old classroom aide wasn't alive for the attacks and asks King and older colleagues what they remember.
For King, 9/11 gets its own lesson. She teaches high school students in a contained autism unit and spends a day each year on the attacks, using readings, interactive activities and an old Nick News segment.
On the other side is Polk, a ninth-grade history teacher at Aiken.
- Unlike Pearl Harbor or World War II, plenty of people around him lived through 9/11.
- "It's a weird thing to teach," Polk tells Axios. So he borrows memories from family and other teachers.
- "I think that makes it a little bit more personable for them."
What he's seeing: Students recognize "9/11," but Polk was surprised some couldn't identify Osama bin Laden or recognize Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
- He connects the attacks to their lives, from TSA screenings to current events, and later traces their history through the Cold War.
- Aiken still marks 9/11 with a morning announcement and 8:46am moment of silence, when the first plane struck the World Trade Center's North Tower.
- But for younger educators, the anniversary can otherwise feel like another day.
Case in point: Preston Polen, a STEM teacher at Parker Woods Montessori, was 2 on 9/11.
- He faintly remembers watching the attacks on a tiny TV as a preschooler. What stuck was having 9/11 drilled into him year after year at school.
Today, 9/11 isn't part of Polen's curriculum. He'll discuss it if it comes up but doesn't plan around the anniversary.
- "It's just another day," he tells Axios.
Zoom out: Polen says he's watched 9/11's prominence in education fade during his six years teaching.
- King worries about what gets lost with that distance.
- "Sometimes I don't even know what I did yesterday," she says. "But if somebody asked me about that day, I could give you a storybook of what happened."
The bottom line: For a growing number of educators, there is no storybook of memories to pass along.
- They have to teach someone else's.