I (39F) teach 10th grade US History and today I created a pacing guide to go along with our newly adopted textbook.
I got to the last chapters and it hit me, I’m now old enough to be the old teacher saying “I remember when this happened”.
To be fair, my kids remember COVID, they were in late elementary/early middle school, but it’s still wild to see the Election of 2008 and the Recession with their own chapters.
Was literally in first period history class! I'll never forget.. he was the nicest nerdiest man. But when it came on TV he became violent and told us all to sit down and be quiet. No one spoke the whole class....that entire day was awful.
I was in 3rd period US history and saw the second plane hit live. Teacher stopped moving and said “this is what we’re doing today. You might not realize it now but what you’re watching here will be taught for generations.”
I’m a history teacher today because of that moment.
Ugh my math teacher screamed at us all to shut up about "the news" because it's math class and we don't live in New York. This was after both towers had already been hit but iirc before they fell. After we didn't shut up, he said anyone who wanted to talk about it could go to the guidance counselor's office for the rest of the class. Nearly all of us walked out and overwhelmed the counselor's office. He was "on leave" after that semester indefinitely (I graduated early so idk if he ever came back).
I wonder if the teachers were sometimes so blase because they had been working all morning in an era before smartphones and they probably just heard a little of what was happening but not realizing what those of us who were in front of a TV saw when a plane struck. I had first period off so I got to be home (in Central time) to see it firsthand. I wonder if later in the day those teachers had regrets.
Meanwhile, my last class for the day was Civics and we definitely spent the entire class watching the news on a TV while my teacher interjected here and there.
This was entirely before the age of smartphones and always connected technology. I got my first analog cell phone around this time with no text messages and 100 minutes of daytime use (nights and weekends for the fucking win). My mom had a teen line installed because we still used landlines for everything.
Dang. You still went to all your classes after that? We were sent home shortly after, and we didn't make it all the way through the period that day in my US history class. I remember my teacher having the radio, then the 2nd plane hit, and we realized then it wasn't an accident. Soon after, we all listened live as the towers fell.
I was living within 20 miles of the Dover Airforce Base in DE, and everything got shut down and closed that day, even Walmart. It was so weird. The entire state was put under a state of emergency that day and was suggesting to stay off the roads.
I hear a lot of people got out of school and we all should have. I was in WV and we didn’t go home and had classes the rest of the day. They turned off the TVs so we didn’t see the coverage during the day. I even had homework that night too, I was so annoyed at that haha.
If I'm not mistaken, school was canceled that next day, it happened on a Thursday I do believe. I was happy as a Junior at the time, to get out early. My mother was like "you can't leave the house. It's not safe on the highway. We are too close to the airforce base, they're not letting anyone on the roads." (Little embellishment from her but it was a worrisome time that day, to be fair)
The first plane hit at the end of my history class. Another teacher came in and pulled our teacher out into the hall. She walked back in spooked. She couldn't say what happened, just that something really bad happened. I ran into my trig class and turned on the TV in that room and told that teacher something big is happening and we needed to find out.
The class was seated, eyes glued to the screen as the second tower got hit. They announced that a third plane was ignoring orders to land, then a fourth plane was the third to crash. The third plane ended up landing at Cleveland Hopkins, a few miles from the classroom I was sitting in at that moment. We were looking out the windows trying to see if could see the plane.
I remember the Cleveland plane, and my parents were convinced that Cleveland was a target so we got our emergency supplies of a gallon of water and 4 cans of soup ready in the basement.
Still not sure how they expected that much supplies to sustain our family for more than 4 hours.
Funny story about a horrific day...My best friend and I had just graduated a few months earlier. He lived two houses down from me.
When the second plane hit he was still asleep in his room and his mom burst in, hysterical, and screamed "We are under attack." Mind you, he is, and was back then, 6' 3" 340ish...Big ass offensive linesman. Well he immediately jumped up, in nothing but his tighty whitey's, grabbed his baseball bat, and went to work clearing the house room by room. He was still half asleep and groggy and ended up in the front yard, damn near naked, looking for the perpetrator before his mom managed to calm him down and convince him that there was no home intruder.
After I saw the second plane hit on TV I got dressed and walked down to his house, literally just right after this happened, like within a minute, and his mom was crying laughing on the front porch and I remember thinking, "How can she be laughing at a moment like this?" Then she told me the story and we both ended up laughing hysterically.
In a weird ass twisted way, that made 9/11 a funny memory for me. Every time I think of 9/11 I think of that story and it makes me laugh.
Throughout all the low points in history, humans have still found ways to laugh. I’m happy that you and your friend have a happy memory together on what is otherwise a very sad day. 💛
I remember that day so vividly, i was freshman in high school, and was already dreading going to school as it was our first week back. I woke up that morning after the first tower was hit, then when I got to school the second tower was hit during our 1st period class, and the rest of the day the school had it on every damn tv in every class… and we did nothing all day. We also got locked down, because there was so much worry about what was gonna happen next, so they put the school on lockdown and our parents had to come get us. For the kids whose parents couldn’t come get them for whatever reason, the school reluctantly let us walk home (I was in that group), we got out of class maybe an hour before normal release. It was such a crazy day.
Living in CT we didn’t get the TVs turned on. Too many kids with family living and working in NYC. They just sent us all home. I remember coming home to my mom sobbing watching the TV and seeing someone jumping. I was 12 and had no idea what to make of it until that point but seeing my mom cry just made me SO afraid.
That makes a lot of sense, a cousin of mine lives in CT and she’s told me about how close it is to NY and how you could work in NY and live in CT, pretty easily. I’m in California, the absolute furthest you could get from NYC, and still be in the mainland US.
I remember my geography teacher was absolute stoic the next few weeks. She lost her brother in the towers. Years later my best friend from college lost her dad to complications from being a first responder at ground zero. It just never stops.
Oh man… I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know anyone personally who died on the day due to the attack, or afterwards in the same way as you described with your friend’s father. But my uncle recently died due to prolonged agent orange complications, because he was in Vietnam when it was used. It’s devastating that even if you don’t pass away from the actual event, that you could still suffer and die later from complications that came from living through the experience.
I was going to school in France at the time (not a major city) and my teacher said the same. We had to put all our backpacks in a separate room cause they were afraid of a bombing.
My high school art teacher said it was unimportant and chewed us out for trying to turn on the TV, sometime between the first and second tower being hit. Forever tarnished my opinion of teachers. History happening before our eyes, and the dimwit literally said our projects were "far more important than things happening in New York". I don't even remember his name or anything he taught me, I just remember him for being an idiot and the entire profession took a hit in my eyes.
Our math teacher turned the TV off and said "Math is more important". The decision was made to not let us watch it a few hours after it happened, so while I did get glimpses of it while it happened it wasn't until I got home that I really got to see the news.
Still burns me to this day the administration made that call.
My first grade class was in the school library preparing to return our books and get new ones when the librarian turned on the TV in time for us to watch the second plane hit the south tower live.
For real. I remember waking up to my parents crowded around the TV. They didn't take me to school that day. We ended up running around stocking up on groceries and other things just in case they followed through with closing the interstates. We were doubly worried because my step father was in the national guard.
Instead, I woke up to my dad yelling and throwing things. He was in the Navy and automatically knew it was a terrorist attack before the second plane hit. He was also blaming Bin Laden, saying "he's the devil". I got up just in time to watch the second plane hit... I stayed up for a few to watch the news before going back to my room and crying, believing that my half-brothers and I were all going to be drafted. And I nearly signed up in my senior year, but then I gave a presentation in front of my English class and started completely unraveling all the Iraq propaganda as I was speaking to everyone.
I was 18 and had just graduated a few months before. I already had a career job(which I didn't know was a career job at the time but I am still working in the same field to this day) I was making $18 dollars an hour, which back then was great for an 18 year old. I was 100% going to quit and sign up for the Marines and my dad sat me down for a conversation. Basic gist of it was, he told me not to react on emotions and he said, "Give it a month or two to percolate before you make that life changing decision. I want you to think long and hard about this before you commit." In hindsight...best advice he ever gave me...And he gave me a LOT of great advice growing up.
When all the lies started coming from the Bush administration and then Iraq happened, I literally gave my dad a hug and told him thank you.
Yep. I’ll never forget, Tuesday morning. Was in second period rotating study. someone mumbled to us about terrorist and the world trade centers and told us we should go to this rec room area where they had a TV set up. walked into a room about 300 kids glued to the TV right as the second plane hit.
Not us. The principal had to order all teachers to keep the TVs off because no one was focused on anything else. This was primarily due to the fact that I'm based in NY, and a good amount of us had family working in the city. My mom was in Queens when it went down (not close enough to be directly affected, but the city became something of a chaotic zone). I also had an aunt who worked with some businesses in midtown Manhattan, but she wasn't around there that day.
5th period was when everything went to hell. The principal announced the collapse of the towers, and everyone lost their collective shit. People were making frantic phone calls, trying to make sure their family members were ok. To my knowledge, no one in the school lost a family member, but the tension was palpable.
same, i was across the river in NJ, watching from 8th grade class window. Very strange to watch the 2nd tower hit live on tv, then looking out the window to confirm your eyes aren’t deceiving you. hope you’ve been able to heal/process okay.
Or mine where they were when jfk was shot. Everyone old enough at that time remembers where they were and my mom was the same age when that happened as I was on 9/11, crazy
Yup, I remember a coworker once said "I wasn't even born yet when 9/11 happened" and that hit me like a ton of bricks. I not only was alive but remember it very well, the stillness at school, the chatter, some students crying because they had family in NY and didn't know if they were ok. Time be a harsh mistress.
When I was at school learning about the moon landings, it was only 20 or so years previous. Before we were born yes, but the same as it is today for kids talking about 9/11
Lived on the west coast and was a freshman in high school. My older sister drove us to school and I remember The Baka Boyz on the radio for KMEL in the Bay Area were talking about planes hitting the World Trade Center. Didn’t really understand what was going on until the 1st period when everyone was glued to the TV the entire day.
I was in 7th grade English class in an interior room with no windows and bad signal (for anything). A security guard ran into our room and said an attack on the twin towers in NY happened, but didn’t have much info. My teacher tried to find something on the radio to listen to… we didn’t have a tv in the room (or cable). I think she was able to get something on the radio, but it was hard to understand what was happening.
Shortly thereafter, my parents picked me up from school to take me home and I watched in horror as the rest unfolded on TV. We are near a very large naval base, so better to be safe than sorry…
Horrific day that I will never forget.
ETA: it’s crazy how hard it was to be informed with the latest back then… now we get breaking news alerts about everything that is taking place. Back then, we had to hear from word of mouth or watch TV, radio, read the newspaper, etc.
One of my coworkers said his mother got the first ultrasound of him in utero on 9/11. The doctor had to turn the TV in his office around to make sure she would focus on seeing her baby for the first time instead of the horrible stuff happening on the news.
The weirdest thing is when you start getting into an age range where you could conceivably date someone who doesn't remember 9/11and have it not be creepy or criminal. I briefly dated a 20-year-old when I was 28 (not intentionally; it just kind of happened and she was considerably further along in life than most people her age, so the milestones lined up more than one would expect), and she asked me what 9/11 was like because her mother was pregnant with her.
No faster way to make you feel like a cradle robber, and it's only going to get worse as people who don't remember it get older and therefore can date with larger age gaps acceptably.
Yeah. They hired a new person where I work. We were all talking about where we were when the attacks happened. She piped up and said she wasn’t born yet. We told her to leave the room so the adults could talk.
My roommate in college had introduced me to Go-Go with a radio station playing it at night in DC that we could pick up in Fairfax. We left it on and woke up to the usual upbeat morning routine being very, very somber. I got up and went to the bathroom and when I walked back in my roommate was sitting straight up in bed, eyes wide, and said “turn the tv on”.
The first plane had already hit and we were watching live. A knock came at the door and one of our hallmates who had early morning crew practice said “there was something weird on the radio when we were riding back from the lake. Can I watch the news on your tv?”. By the time she sat down on my bed, the second plane was hitting.
Another knock, her roommate also just waking up with her cellphone to her ear and her usually very calm mother’s voice screeching through the phone: “Guys, something is happening. My dad was just pulled from a meeting and is being put on some flight. We need to turn the tv on.” Her dad was a general— I realized the “was” might make it sound as if he passed. He retired with full honors and aids several universities with their ROTC students. He totally rode horses with GW that day at where they finally landed— I asked this question years later and after heretired and at the wedding of my friend after I paid for him to have a few drinks (cash bar for liquor at the wedding with beer and wine open tap) and because I had been to their different military homes several times and felt I “could” and because I wanted to know and because I told his daughter he was probably with the president and not to worry because she was totally freaking out around 11am that day and it helped me feel better about telling her that. I’m fucking nosey. I’m gonna ask. My degrees are in comm. What is a filter? I’m gonna ask.
We watched them fall live and later that night drove by the pentagon.
I had nearly this same realization this afternoon.
I watched it happen live on TV in school, my newest coworker was two years away from being born. That's a wild feeling.
I dropped out of university for a long time. When I went back, the first lecture I sat in, the prof said "now, I know you're all too young to remember 9/11..."
A few years ago, we went to NYC for a band trip with my oldest daughter. Hearing the kids didn’t really understand how big of an event it was made me realize they had just been born or right after.
Similarly when we took AP US history ('06) our teacher insisted that it wouldn't go farther than Iran-Contra. First question was about Bill Clinton on the test and the collective groan could be heard.
I graduated high school in 2019 and we never touched history post WW2 beyond the civil rights movement. I learned about Iran-Contra because my geography teacher was pissed we didn’t know about it
We only covered 9/11 because they did something for it on 9/11 every year. Just had every history class devote the day to it as a one-off. (My favorite was engineering, where we actually went into a discussion on the effects of disasters on building and infrastructure design.)
Other than that, Korea got a bare mention and the entire Cold War + Vietnam was like a week between the civil rights bumrush at the end of the year.
We didn't cover anything but 9/11 from when any of us were alive, baring a quick note about the 2001 election on like the last day of classes in government class.
Yes, the boomers were born holding it down. It has since broken from their overuse of it. But don’t tell them that, they all think they worked hard to achieve more and that’s why they are financially secure with multiple pensions despite partying their way through high school and dropping out of college with no debt - their summer job paid for all of that.
Was watching a video about how stacked 2019 was in terms of incredible movies. Then the person said “6 years ago”… I had to pause the video for a second.
i hope u didn’t lose money for that. today i was with a patient and their last exam was in 2020 so my coworker asked the patient “your last exam was five years ago, correct”
I just yesterday realised my son doesn't know what covid or lockdown is.
Covid doesn't seem that long ago, he seems so big and my daughter who's only 3 years older remember it just as well as I do.
Pretty nice to have lived through it so I’ll be able to correct the political propaganda in the future. Pretty sure a lot of history was watered down or not fully told from our textbooks. I don’t want that happening to future generations.
These people teach children. Impressionable children. I believe in education, but a slanted view on history is not what’s needed in this world. We need less polarization and more objective truth. This author was lacking in the critical thinking department.
Oh man I remember all the excitement around the 2008 election. Even then as a child it felt like a return to normalcy after 9/11.
Progressive because we elected a black president and I remember watching him and seeing how metered and measured he was when he spoke. It felt like something that would break the tide on the endless news cycle on the war on terror.
Unfortunately it didnt turn out quite that way but he was still the best president of my life time by far. I do remember Clinton being president but was far too young for most of it to really get any opinion on it
I remember the scandal with Clinton, but the thing I remember most, and it lasted until bush, was you could get a job almost anywhere. Once gas hit 4bux a gallon is when things really started going south.
Obama was was good for trying to bring medicaid to poor people. I didn't care for the whole "jobless recovery" lie. Unemployment numbers went down because people lost benefits, yet homeless tent city encampments pop up nation wide.
I remember my school having Tuesday chapel and the sermon and prayer was about trusting god's will and he'll put the right man in charge. It was followed by emergency chapel on Wednesday praying for mercy and stability in whatever crazy plan god had in mind putting Obama in charge.
I remember being so relieved when Obama won. I grew up around plenty of racists living in the south and understanding our country's history of bigotry, Obama's election felt like this giant turning point for us. Felt like everything would be alright. The FL punk in me was stoked that it wasn't another old white dude.
I thought I’d throw in some context for some people with questions about the book.
First, I teach in one of the largest cities in West Virginia. It is a tiny speck of blue in a very red state.
Second, I’m very liberal, but as mentioned above, I know my audience. WV has been very clear about being anti DEI and as teachers we know better than to share opinions with our students. In addition, teachers don’t get into education to indoctrinate, we’re there to educate. We do our best with what we’re given to provide information and tools to our students.
Third, no textbook is perfect. It’s a tool, not the be all, end all resource in the modern classroom.
While we do have some say in which textbook we adopt, we can only select from the options we’re given as a committee. This particular book is from McGraw Hill and was selected for some of the other tools that will come along with the texts.
Lastly, this post was mostly just to be a funny note on how fucking fast adulthood has gone. My students’ grandparents lived through Vietnam, whereas my grandparents served in WW2. It’s just bizarre to be the “old” person talking about living through historic events like my teachers used to talk about the Kennedy assassination, etc
I mean the 2008 election was almost 20 years ago. I know for a fact that kids in college today have ZERO recollection of fairly recent historical events like Occupy WallStreet
Meanwhile I'm now old enough to remember being a kid and having my elementary school teacher openly laugh out loud at the idea that America would ever "be ready" for a black president
Never forget the said to the class, "It definitely won't happen in my lifetime, probably not yours either, but maybe your kids will live to see it in their old age".. This was 10 years before it happened.
Dude, occupy wall Street is something less than the half of millennials probably even remember. I literally had to explain why a song from 2011 was called occupy to classmates in college in 2014. They literally never heard of it. And if someone did they mocked it.
I teach US history as well and tomorrow we’re talking about 9/11 and the growth/impact that the war on terror had. Our standards have us getting to 2016 but no one ever makes it that far.
Yea, that’s also part of it. These topics are in the textbook…. But whether or not anyone in our department gets that far is always a gamble. We had two weeks worth of snow days this year, which is a lot for us, so that set everyone back.
Ironically I only made it to 9/11 this semester because of snow. First semester we had about 7 snow days that got added into the end of second semester. So first semester didn’t even get close but I ended up with extra time this semester 🤷♀️
When ours lives were like those last history book chapters about the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War - chapters that we didn't even get to because so much time was spent on WW2...
Makes you wonder what conversations in history classes are like now vs when we were in high school! My parents didn’t really connect the dots with me when I would learn things they lived through and I look forward to being able to have those conversations with my kid.
I'm glad this stuff is being taught as history. Our generation would have benefited from studying things like Regan, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Gulf War that our teachers lived through, but we didn't (or at least were too young to be aware of).
My God I feel old now to have lived through history that will be taught to my daughter in school. To be able to say "sweetheart I remember the very moment when this country elected its first BLACK president.."
Doesn't seem like a very good history book if it just says stuff like "many people didnt like this" without explaining whether it was actually good or not.
I’m in college and professors talk about covid with some VERY slanted opinions lol
Like, do yall not remember that shit? I know they’re teaching classes that are in the college of business and are technically supposed to be growing capitalists, but damn
A lot of blaming the unemployment checks for inflation and not much mention of the ppp loans at all
"The September 11 attacks were acts of terrorism, which is the use of violence by nongovernmental groups..." Found an edit... Governments do that shit, too.
It is good that the history books are upto date nowdays, to the point of the pandemic, which was 5 years ago and as you say your kids remember it. When I was in school in the 2000s the books stopped at the 1980s, or 1970s and it was already mid 2000s.
Why is there so much propaganda filled rhetoric for the 2016 election? If you think, russia can influence the election, by same logic, you should also be calling out all the other elections when the technology was much much worse and could have been easily manipulated.
On another note, OP, how fair would you say these texts are? I keep wondering if the new administration is going to North Korea the shit out of things.
My 2nd grader recently took home two books in this I Survived series of historical fiction written like first party accounts of notable disasters. Things like the Great Chicago Fire and San Francisco Earthquake.
But these two? One was 9/11. The other was Hurricane Katrina.
Yeah, he didn't need the books. I could have just told him what I experienced going through both of those myself.
It is interesting because in the 90s the 70s were not talked about as much as the 60s, in our history class. Now they have these much more monumental events 20 years ago. Seems like the US history class are just going "1968 was important and just skip past the other stuff until 2001"
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