Schools Make Sure Students Never Forget 9/11

The devastating attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, have united the students and faculty at Cranford High School and Union County College over the past decade. While each school has taken a different approach at incorporating 9/11 into the curriculum, it is well represented at each school.

Judy Podbelski, the supervisor of Social Studies/ Business Management and Information Systems said teaching students about what occurred on Sep. 11, is important. The school is following the guidelines set forth by the 9-11 Commission this past July and will include these recommendations in the curriculum for U.S. History II.

“We have been waiting for the Commission's recommendations before moving forward,” Podbelski said. “At this time we teach the events leading to the terrorist attack and the attack itself as part of United States History II.”

Podbelski said the students and faculty are sensitive to those who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 – both students and Cranford residents. The school attempts to treat the topic with as much care as possible, so students who did lose loved ones feel comfortable, she said. Each year since the attacks, the school holds a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center at the hands of terrorists.

“Teachers in the Social Studies Department devote class time to acknowledge the attacks at a level that is comfortable and respectful to the students, and also to those who perished,” she said.

Although the students at Union County College may have a better understanding of what took place, it has had a different type of affect on the campus, said senior professor in the business department, Cindy Singer. While no classes directly dealing with the attacks have been created, the entire faculty is more sensitive to the issue and
it has been “mainstreamed” into courses at the school, Singer said. Due to Sept. 11, the school now offers an Arabic language class and an Islamic student organization has formed as well.

“I think to isolate and make specific course doesn’t serve us well,” Singer said.

After 9/11, some students - including Muslim girls - left the school, she said. But, it did bring students and faculty closer, she added. When the terrorist attacks took place, Singer asked her marketing class to stay and for three hours they discussed what took place. All of the students agreed the terrorists used the World Trade Center as a billboard for a very large message of hate for America.