SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) — The 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks is this Friday and educators across the country are sharing their experiences of that tragic day and why we must never forget.
The opening of Scranton High School in 2001 took place just four days before the September 11th attacks, and History Teacher Jerry Skotleski remembers that tragic day and how he kept his students informed as the attacks unfolded
“We had no cable, we had no internet. We were just open,” Skotleski, a history teacher at Scranton High School, said.
Jerry Skotloski remembers his third-period history class walking through the doors to his Scranton High School classroom that Tuesday morning in 2001 after finding out on the radio that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
“As I listened to that, I was drawing on my whiteboard, telling the students what’s happening. This is what the buildings look like. This is where it is because I have stood on top of those buildings,” Skotleski said.
Skotleski had been on top of the Observation Deck just a year earlier and remembers teaching his students about the Twin Towers. At the same time, a pivotal moment in American history unfolded in real time.
“To stand on top of that building and to feel the power of the building and the essence of it, I can relay that to the students and now, all of a sudden, being around that building, I can tell them exactly what was happening,” Skotleski said.
Now 25 years later, Skotloski is teaching a whole new generation of students who weren’t alive at that point about those personal experiences as part of how he teaches about not only 9/11 but other pivotal moments in American History.
“They have no attachment to any part of 9/11, and you have to show them how our personal life attaches to that,” Skotleski said.