LEBANON COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) \u2014 While many adults can recall exactly where they were on Sept. 11, 2001, today\u2019s students are learning about the attacks from textbooks \u2014 and schools in central Pennsylvania are finding ways to make the lessons personal.<\/p>\n
At Northern Lebanon Elementary School, students in kindergarten through sixth grade created hundreds of posters that were displayed around the school playground.<\/p>\n
Principal Justin Bruce said the project began with a card sent home with each student.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gave every student a little card that they took home, and they were able to decorate for them of what 9\/11 meant to them,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n
Fourth-grade teacher Mardelle Bouchette said the posters reflected a range of themes, from patriotism to honoring first responders and family connections to public service.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can be anything from red, white and blue. It could be honoring the first responder. It could be that their family members or loved ones belong in the fire department or the police station,\u201d Bouchette said.<\/p>\n
Bruce said the posters are meant to spark reflection and discussion among students.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur kids will take their time going out there and looking at all those things and having conversations about 9\/11,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The school district said its approach to teaching about 9\/11 emphasizes compassion, helping students understand both the tragedy and the response that followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want the youth to understand the tragedy of the day, but you also want them to understand the amount of empathy and resilience and bravery and just selflessness that people had in helping all those people that were affected,\u201d Bouchette said.<\/p>\n
Bruce said the school also highlights the acts of kindness and heroism that emerged that day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe like to focus on the positive things that that came out of that day, of the kindness and the heroes that went in and helped people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
With today marking 25 years since 9\/11, Bouchette said the passage of time is also changing who needs help connecting to the history \u2014 including some educators.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are also bridging into that gap where some of our younger teachers, they haven’t lived this firsthand. So, it does help connect all walks of life to understand that we want to remember these victims but also celebrate the good that came out of such a bad tragedy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEBANON COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) \u2014 While many adults can recall exactly where they were on Sept. 11, 2001,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-283998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}