History teachers at Normal West High School taught the facts and lessons of the 9/11 terrorist attack to students Friday during the 25th anniversary.
The events of 2001 unfolded more than half a decade before even the oldest high school students today were born. For the teachers of today who were alive for that event, the task has become conveying the gravity of that situation and the events that came after it to their students.
For some teachers it takes a personal anecdote.
Jason Klokkenga taught about 9/11 not only on Friday, the anniversary, but also the days leading up to it. His civics class, made up of juniors and seniors, was already learning about constitutional powers. Klokkenga used the events of 2001 to explain constitutional powers, such as declaring war.
Abby Boesenberg is a history teacher at Normal West who was a high schooler that Tuesday. A quarter-century later, she teaches just down the hallway from the teacher whose class she was in that day.
“I remember asking my social studies teacher, Mr. Klokkenga, like, ‘What is going on?’ And he's like, ‘We don't really know.’ And so that's what I remember most distinctly,” said Boesenberg.
In addition to explaining that she was in Klokkenga’s class, Boesenberg explained what it was like getting information as it happened. She remembered first hearing about a fire in New York on her ride to school with her brother, and then changing the radio to music instead.
“We were like, ‘Well, New York, we want to listen to music.’ And then when we got to school, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is going on?’ And everyone — I just remember wide eyes all day long trying to figure out what was going on,” said Boesenberg.
The personal stories also highlight something notably different between 2001 and 2026: how we get information. If a major event happens today, most would track the event live on their phones or other connected devices. In 2001, the only real options were television and radio.
Cathy Unsbee, a social studies teacher at Normal West, was a sophomore at the University of Illinois on that day. She said while she and her classmates were trying to gather information as it unfolded, it was when she got back to her dorm around midday that she realized just how big of a deal it was. Her roommate had written a patriotic message on the whiteboard on her door.
“We all left our doors open because we wanted that sense of community, and it was weird because I can remember stopping in that moment and thinking, ‘This is strange.’ Because you could hear throughout the whole hallway the echo. Everyone was doing the same thing. We all had the TV on,” said Unsbee.
High school students of today were not alive to know what it was like when everyone in the country stopped what they were doing to follow the events of 9/11. Still, there was a moment they were around for that likely felt similar: March 13, 2020. Late in the school day that Friday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced that school activities would be shut down for an uncertain amount of time as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So, if you would ask kids, ‘Do you remember when that happened?’ They were, ‘Oh yeah, I remember online. Oh, I remember doing this. I was in this grade,' and things like that,” said Klokkenga.
“The kids all living through COVID and knowing what what a historic thing that was, and how that affected everyone, where they were ...That's how we can kind of relate the human context across,”
said Boesenberg.
Lessons from the day
Klokkenga’s civics class learned about not only the day, but also the events that came after it and how it affects them today.
Klaus Lindley, a senior, said Klokkenga explained how 9/11 led to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] today. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, an executive branch department created in response to 9/11. Lindley also said the class also learned about how volatility in the Middle East leads to volatility for gas prices.
“The video we’re watching puts a lot of context and is helping me learn things I didn’t know,” said Lindley.
The class also learned about a rise in racism and Islamophobia following 9/11. Junior Romeo Shavers said that lesson made him think of a friend of his at NWHS, who is Muslim.
“I would never think of anything like that because I’ve known him since I was like in elementary school,” said Shavers. “I would never just go up to him and be like, ‘Oh yeah I hate you, you're the people who did 9/11,’ like, no, that makes no sense.”
