September 11th Timeline
The following compilation is just one person's way of dealing with September
11th and its aftermath. I did not know of what use I would make of the
headlines; I jotted them down erratically and egocentrically and from
several different locations. Of course, I noted things that were most
interesting to me or impacted on my life.
As we prepared the September 11th Revisited lesson plan for the CUBE Web
site, it became a perfect vehicle for examining, from all points of view,
how things have changed since that day, and how our rights have been
impacted. They provide the opportunity to look at the daily happenings from
the point of view of the average citizen, the firefighter, the traveler, the
immigrant, the emigrant, policepersons, people working in tall buildings,
tax payers, not-for-profit organizations, people working in public
buildings, mailpersons, disaster relief personnel, subway riders and
drivers; airline pilots and passengers, and on and on. You will think of
many others.
In the brain-based CUBE Resource, Picture This!, Education Specialist Laurie
Bottiger comments, "Empathetic skills allow students to think about others
before making a decision. Empathy is what is lacking in todayıs
communities. Lack of empathy is why citizens are not involved in the
democratic process. It is why we get what we get. When students make
choices in daily life and consider themselves a part of the whole, they are
aware and recognizing the importance of thinking about everyone, not just
themselves."
Approaching the headlines from curriculum perspectives brings forward
several possibilities. The educator or facilitators can add in their own
perspectives.
- Math: group the headlines into various subject categories
- Geography: group the headlines by geographic regions and examine the impact
worldwide
- History: compare to other similar disasters; what was unlike, what was
different?
- Economics: examine the cost of the disaster in terms not only of the
destruction itself, but the rebuilding
- Social: calculate the numbers and kinds of people impacted directly, and by
extension
- Politics: compile a list of the many groups who became involved in a
political way and how early in the process that involvement took place
- Art: the many ways that people used art to express outrage, to heal, to
memorialize
Since the length of the document is interesting in its own right, but
perhaps cumbersome for a classroom or any one individual, a facilitator
could consider tearing up the document into smaller pieces, thirds or
fourths, for individual use.
The opportunities for use can extend over generations, or be a short dinner
table conversation. It provides some basic facts and figures, not all of
them, from which to start a conversation and dialogue and many numbers of
things.
Since September 11th is not, and probably will never be, over, to continue
this aggregation of headlines would be an interesting exercise in itself.
Click here to view the September 11th Timeline compilation.
architivities:
1. World Trade Center
2. September 11 Revisited
3. WTC Responses
