Forrest School Honors Patriot Day

Forrest Elementary School students bedecked in shades of red, white and blue, gathered outside their building Monday afternoon in observance of Patriot Day.

Members of last year’s Student Council took turns speaking at the student-led ceremony, which included a Patriot Day Mad Lib and a child-centric reading of the Constitution.

Earlier in the school day, teachers held classroom sessions to educate students about the significance of Sept. 11 and to answer their questions.

Principal Mike Weaver said he brought the school together for the event to help students understand the significance of Sept. 11 in the nation’s history, remember those who lost their lives that day and celebrate the heroes who provided aid during America’s time of need.

“Young kids have questions,” Weaver said. “They have a great awareness of what goes on around them. We felt it was important to acknowledge that and help frame [Sept. 11] for them in a way that was appropriate.”

Weaver said he was struck Friday when a kindergarten student interrupted coloring time and said to the person beside him, “The planes flew into the building and made all the people sad.”

“Completely unrelated to what he was doing, he verbalized that,” Weaver said. “I think that speaks volumes to how important this lesson is. Because the children hear it, they see it and they may not understand it. And it’s our responsibility as educators to help bring it into focus for them.”

Part of framing that focus means sidestepping the darker images and motives of that day, and looking instead at the heroes and sense of community that emerged from it.

“We are acknowledging that, yes, in fact, people were hurt and lives were lost, but in addition to that, there were other things that happened on that day that were heroic,” Weaver said. “We’re acknowledging both and then putting our primary focus on the things we can do in our community to be heroes to each other.”

For teachers who lived through the terrorist attacks, it can sometimes be difficult not to bring raw emotion to the topic when introducing it to a group of children who often weren’t even born when it happened.

“9/11 is like the Civil War for them, because they don’t have the direct experience,” teacher Rich Vecchiarelli said. “The challenge is that we went through it. We have an emotional attachment to it. We don’t want to scare the kids with that emotion.”

Both Vecchiarelli and teacher Deana Cuevas said the children had many questions about the Sept. 11 attacks, including wondering why anyone would perpetrate such a violent deed against the United States.

“I tried to explain the differences in religion, education and perspective,” Vecchiarelli said, explaining how he responded to students who asked, “Why?”

If questions got too dark, Cuevas said she steered students toward the heroic deeds performed that day and emphasized that more lives were saved than were lost.

To bring that point home, Cuevas said she had the children select a hero in their everyday lives, and write and illustrate what made that person a hero. She said most students chose family members who worked in service-oriented professions like soldiers, police officers and firefighters.

Forrest’s treatment of 9/11 is directly connected with its “Heroes” service theme this year. Each student received a footprint-shaped keychain Monday to represent the footprint or trail that a hero’s actions leave.

Each month throughout the school year, a different group of heroes – police officers, fire fighters, doctors– will be highlighted, and students will brainstorm a list of ways that they can be a hero to someone in the Fair Lawn community. The students will document their heroic acts visually on a paper cut-out of a footprint that will be displayed on the walls of the school.

“At the end of the year, we will see how far we’ve walked in a hero’s shoes,” Weaver said.