Twenty-Five Years
When 17-year-old student Max Avena visited the site of New York's fallen Twin Towers, hearing the first-hand accounts of survivors of the deadliest attacks on US soil left him "speechless."
Twenty-five years after the seismic events of September 11, 2001, an army of educators are working to fill gaps in the knowledge of a generation of youngsters who were not born when the United States came under attack.
There is no standardised US national teaching of 9/11, when 2'977 people died including the passengers and crew of four hijacked planes, victims in New York's Twin Towers, firefighters, and personnel at the Pentagon. Only a handful of US states mandate teaching of it, leading to a patchwork of different content and approaches across the country, so volunteers, teachers and charities are stepping up.
At Wantagh High School, in a Long Island community that was home to a dozen 9/11 victims, teachers wanted to organise a trip to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City to help impart the enormity of the attacks.
"Our students were learning about 9/11 in the same manner that our students are learning about World War II and Pearl Harbor, in the sense that they were not alive for those events," said Wantagh High School Principal Paul Guzzone. "You can't compare the experience of visiting the site with just hearing stories in the classroom or seeing videos online."
Avena visited the memorial last year and said he was profoundly affected. "I have really good family friends that were first responders in the 9/11 attacks, and you hear stories about it. You never really realize how real it is, and how the feeling is, until you're on site in the memorial."
The sacrifice
To cover the costs of visiting the National 9/11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan, the charitable foundation of actor Gary Sinise stepped in to back the trips, going on to support fundraising efforts for annual visits, and a memorial at the school.
"There's teachers coming out of college that don't have a memory of 9/11, and so it just kind of makes it important that we tell this story and educate as many people as we can, while we can, and while they're here," said James Ravella, executive vice president at the foundation. "That sense of speaking from experience is fading out every year."
The foundation now offers teacher development programs in partnership with the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, as well as running trips to both the Pentagon and Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania with other schools.