How to Teach September 11 in Your Homeschool

7 min read

This post contains affiliate links — the three books below are my Amazon links. If you buy through them I earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.

I was fifteen, a sophomore, sitting in Spanish class.

I remember my teacher handling it — telling us what had happened, steadily, without letting the room tip over into panic. I remember being frightened anyway. And I remember my parents coming to get me early, and how much better the world felt from the back seat of our car on the way home.

My oldest is fifteen and a sophomore this year. She has never known a world where that day had not already happened. To her it is history — the way Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination are history to me: something that happened to other people, before I was born.

That gap is the whole reason this is hard to teach. It is the first history most of us will teach our children that happened to us.

Start by deciding what you actually want them to carry

Before you plan anything, answer this for yourself: what do I want my child to walk away holding?

It is the first history most of us will teach our children that happened to us.

For us it comes down to three. What actually happened, told honestly and at the size the child in front of me can hold. That thousands of ordinary people ran toward the danger instead of away from it. And that for a long while afterwards, this country was remarkably kind to itself.

Once you have your three, the rest of this gets much simpler. You are not trying to cover a whole day of history — you are handing over three things you have already decided matter, and you get to choose how much of each a particular child is ready for. You know your children better than any lesson plan does.

By age, because it matters enormously here

Under six. We wait. I know good families who do it differently, so take this as my reasoning rather than a rule: there is very little a four-year-old gains here, quite a lot that can frighten them, and the history will still be here when they are seven. If yours asks — an older sibling mentioned it, or something was on — answer honestly, briefly: “Something very sad happened a long time ago, and a lot of people helped.” Then let them go back to playing. At that age, that is a complete answer.

Six to nine. Facts, kept simple, with the helpers at the centre. Two planes were flown into two very tall buildings in New York on purpose, the buildings fell down, and many people died. Then tell them about the firefighters who went up the stairs while everyone else came down, the boats that carried half a million people off the island, the people who gave blood and food and their own beds. Children this age can hold a hard fact if it arrives wrapped in helpers.

Ten to thirteen. Now you can do the timeline properly — four planes, the towers, the Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania where the passengers decided what to do. This is the age for one first-person account, read together. They will ask why, and the honest answer is that some people believed things that made them willing to kill, and that the reasons are complicated enough that adults still argue about them.

Fourteen and up. Primary sources, and enough time to sit with them. The transcripts. The photographs. The recordings of people calling home. A teenager can handle the full weight of the day, and they can handle the harder conversation about what came after it — which is where I would spend more of the time than on the day itself.

What we do

One first-person account, read out loud. Not a summary. Somebody’s own words about their own morning. This does more than any documentary.

Ask someone who remembers. This is the thing homeschooling makes easy and school never could. Call a grandparent. Ask a neighbour. Ask me, or the checkout woman who is old enough. Every adult over about thirty has an answer to “where were you”, and hearing four different answers is a lesson in how history actually reaches people.

Look at the photographs together, carefully. The firefighters. The flag. The dust. Sit with them rather than scrolling past.

Do something for a helper. Bake for a fire station. Write to a paramedic. The day is now a national day of service, and for younger children the doing is what makes it stick.

Then let the day be a little quieter than usual. We do not do a full school day. We read, we talk, we go outside. I did not plan it this way, but the thing I remember most about being fifteen that day is being collected and taken home — and that is more or less what we give our children every day now.

What I do not do

Do not show the footage to young children. The towers falling is available in one click and it is genuinely traumatic. Fourteen and up, with you in the room, having decided in advance. Not younger, not alone, not on a tablet.

Do not turn it into a politics lesson. There is a right time for that conversation, and this is not it. Today is about what happened, and about the people who ran toward it.

Do not perform an emotion you do not feel, and do not hide one you do. If you cry, let them see it and tell them why. Mine have learned more from watching me be moved than from anything I have ever assigned.

Do not let it be a normal Friday. Whatever you do, mark it. Twenty minutes and a candle is enough. Children learn what matters from what we stop for — so stopping at all is most of the lesson.

Three books worth ordering now

I am posting this a couple of days early on purpose, so there is time for these to arrive before Friday.

For younger children, Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey by Maira Kalman is the gentlest true entry point I know — a real boat, real helpers, and nothing that will follow them to bed.

For middle grades, Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story by Nora Raleigh Baskin follows four children through the days before it happened, which is a kind way in. You meet them as ordinary children first.

For teenagers, The Red Bandanna by Tom Rinaldi is the story of Welles Crowther, a young man who went back into the south tower again and again to bring people out. It is the one that stays with people, and it is the one I would hand a fifteen-year-old.

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum also publishes free lesson plans and a virtual tour, made by people who do this carefully.

The part I keep coming back to

When my children ask whether I was scared that day, I tell them yes. It is true, and the part worth passing on is what came after it. My teacher did her best with a room of frightened fifteen-year-olds, and I am grateful to her. But what I actually remember is my parents coming to get me, and going home.

My oldest is the age I was. My son will ask in ten years, and by then I will be telling him about a day that feels to him the way the 1960s feel to me.

That is what we are doing when we teach this well. We are handing something over carefully, from the people who remember to the people who will have to remember for us.

We are handing something over carefully, from the people who remember to the people who will have to remember for us.

Tribute in Light, the two beams that stand over lower Manhattan each September. U.S. Air Force photograph by Denise Gould.

If you are working out how to do this in your own house, come and say so in the Homebuilt Community. Somebody there has an idea you have not thought of, and somebody there needs to hear that you are not sure either.

Here’s to teaching the hard days gently, and to raising children who run toward.

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