NEW YORK CITY (PIX11) – For years, teaching students who weren’t alive for 9/11 posed new challenges in the classroom. Now, teachers themselves weren’t alive to experience the day that changed global history.

It’s one of the many new obstacles that have appeared in New York City classrooms in the 25 years since the September 11 attacks, from social media to the COVID-19 pandemic to a fraught political climate. 

“Our task is to help build a more empathetic society, right?” said Brian Carlin, a long-time educator who now leads social studies programming for New York City Public Schools. “We know it’s not easy. The easy thing to do would be to leave it alone.”

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How is 9/11 taught in NYC?

In New York State, schools are required to hold a moment of silence to commemorate 9/11. Beyond that, it’s in the 8th, 10th and 11th grade curriculum for U.S. History. 

It’s up to individual principals and teachers to decide how they’ll approach the day. New York City provides materials and professional development with the 9/11 Memorial, which also provides teaching guides online.

Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility advises that ages 4 to 7 are too young for a full lesson on the September 11 attacks but asks teachers to listen if students have it on their minds. Answer questions, address misinformation and focus on helpers.

“With the youngest kids, having the conversations in a way that does not increase a sense of fear, does not [create] a sense of alienation, does not seed an assumption of bad intentions on the part of other people is crucial,” said Tala Manassah, Deputy Executive Director of Morningside Center. “[Try] to keep it focused on ways that we can be allies. That we can be upstanders.”

For grades 3-5, the 9/11 Memorial suggests teaching basic factual information with a heavy focus on heroism. Its lesson plan includes a cover from The New Yorker depicting children dressed as first responders on Halloween in 2001. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation includes first-hand accounts from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, first responders and military personnel.

It’s in grades 3-5 that the Morningside Center suggests introducing the reaction to 9/11 in the United States, that many people were threatened “because other people thought they looked like those who were behind the attacks.”

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This theme becomes stronger in middle school education, as teachers are encouraged to dig into themes of fear and security from multiple angles. The historic scope also widens in middle school – looking at the city’s return to normalcy and hearing from first-person sources.

The 9/11 Memorial provides a video that attributes the attack to al-Qaeda and shows imagery of the towers collapsing. The Morningside Center includes the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in middle school lesson plans, and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation provides a lesson plan on the war on terror in middle school. 

In high school, this is where in-depth conversations of presidential power, counterterrorism, the search for Osama bin Laden, airport security and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab violence take form. 

Given that 9/11 education in New York City public schools is not standardized, the educational process often starts with the teacher, according to education experts. They need robust professional and personal development opportunities to work through their own emotions, biases and exposure to misinformation.

“A school can’t claim to be a site of high-quality teaching and learning if there isn’t capacity at the school to talk about difficult or controversial things. But in order to get there, educators really need support in developing the capacity to be the holders of those conversations,” Manassah said. “It is in the broader social interest for that to become something that gets much more standardized and much more normalized.”

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Challenges in the classroom

When the attacks on September 11 happened, Brian Carlin was teaching middle schoolers in Bay Ridge. Being in a school with the highest Arab and Muslim population in the area, Carlin immediately saw the challenges ahead in helping students understand the devastating day.

“I had two students who were twins. They were both Muslim students, Arab students … one of them said, ‘I’m happy I could pass for Italian,'” Carlin said. “It broke my heart.”

Teaching such a complex and emotional topic has always been difficult. 25 years later, the challenges have stacked up – from social media to the COVID-19 pandemic to a fraught political climate. The basis of all these conversations must be strong community connection and trust, something social media and lockdown have eroded, Manassah said. 

“Difficult conversations are made infinitely easier when you have already established a certain level of belonging and a certain level of trust,” Manassah said. “Before we even get to the place of trying to figure out, what is the impact of social media on big geopolitical or global issues, it’s on the basic level of kids having the ability to relate to one another.”

The Morningside Center proposes making community agreements before discussing 9/11, asking students not to talk over each other and to use only first-person statements.

Across all age levels, 9/11 is an opportunity to teach kids that they are a part of history. 

“We’re always looking to tell a story not just so that students can see themselves because that’s important, but so they can see others. So that they can see that people aren’t different,” Carlin said. “We’re in the most diverse city in the country, if not the world, and we’re, we want to make everyone feel that they’re a part of the history, and a real history.”

Emily Rahhal is a digital reporter who has covered New York City since 2023 after reporting in Los Angeles for years. She joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of her work here and follow her on Twitter here.

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