History and Memory

9/11, Creating History and the Mirror Analogy

In class this week, we’ve discussed the importance of spending time in Social Studies thinking about the present, and how our experiences help shape who we are. We have also done activities designed to make you think about how historian create/summarize history. The idea to remember is that no one historian can give a complete history. 9/11 provides a good example of this.

HW: Since this is the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, there are a huge number of newspaper, TV, and radio articles. Your job this weekend is to explore some of them. Please note that some of this can be upsetting. If you find yourselves exploring a resource that feels like “too much” to you, skip it and try another. Do the best you can, but if you have trouble completing this for some reason, just let me know.

Directions:

For a check on HW, read or view one story and interview a parents/another adult.

For a +, read or view more than one story and interview a parent/another adult.

Resources:

http://www.tributewtc.org/programs/toolkit.html

This is a collection of 8 stories-each with a video- about how people experienced 9/11 and how they dealt with it after. The one about Susan Retik has a Needham-Wellesley connection.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/specials/sept_11_anniversary/?p1=News_links

This is the Boston Globe’s section on 9/11 anniversary. They are adding new stories every day, so look around. The story from 9/8 has good connections to what you may have discussed about religions last year. The articles from 9/6 (“the Rarely Noticed Casualties of 9/11”) and 9/4 have personal stories, while the one from 9/2 discusses how we saw the world differently before 9/11.

http://www.foxnews.com/september-11/

This has a collection of videos from individuals, as well as some interesting stories about how things like increasing airline security has worked or not.

TO DO:

For the story you read:

Write the name of the article/story and the source

Summarize the story in 3-4 sentences

Tell me what this added to “the history”(your knowledge) of 9/11 in 3-4 sentences

List 2-3 new questions you have from this

Parent interview: Ask them what they remember/what stands out about 9/11. You might also ask them if they remember what they were thinking/worrying about on the day and in the days/weeks after.

Summarize that in either several bullets or several sentences. The conversation is more important than you recording everything they say.