On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Sari Beth Rosenberg was gearing up for her first day of student-teaching in New York City when the news broke that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
Rosenberg never made it into a classroom that day, as the city grappled with the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. But now, Rosenberg is entering her 25th year of teaching U.S. history in New York, at a high school near where the Twin Towers stood before the 9/11 terror attacks killed more than 2,000 people.
In recent years, her lessons have evolved from memorializing the day to teaching about the attacks and the fallout to teenagers who weren’t yet alive to experience it firsthand.
Rosenberg spoke to Education Week about how 9/11 has shaped her career, how her lessons about the attacks have changed over time, and her advice for other teachers about how to teach about 9/11 with care and compassion.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was your experience on 9/11, and how has that shaped your teaching career?
The cell towers were down, and the only way I could communicate with anyone that day was through AOL instant message. I was instant messaging with my friends and parents on my dial-up, until some friends came and were sitting in my apartment with me, watching the TV, just kind of stunned and in shock.
I remember I kept saying, “I have to go to school. I have to go to work.” Of course I couldn’t go to school, and nobody expected me to report to that student-teaching position that day, but it was so hard to wrap your mind around what had just happened.
The second semester of the year, I was teaching at Stuyvesant High School, right by the site of Ground Zero. I know trauma and shock can make you block a lot of stuff out, but I don’t really remember kids talking about it in school. I didn’t bring it up, even though I was teaching a U.S. history class.
In the immediate aftermath, I just kind of soldiered on teaching U.S. history like the curriculum had it before 9/11 happened.
In retrospect, there’s so many different themes to unpack around 9/11, but at the time it was just this raw, terrible thing that happened in the city—we’re just kind of getting through that school year.
At what point did it switch from not being brought up to becoming part of your curriculum?
The next year there was an assembly, and in the years following there’d be moments of silence, and they’d ring a bell at the times each tower was struck.
Somewhere along the line, you stop doing those very clear, intentional things, like ringing the bell. It became more of [an expectation]: “In social studies, you should teach about 9/11.”
How has the way you teach about 9/11 changed over time?
Even when it was the 20th anniversary, ... students had no memory of it, and now it’s even a growing share of parents who weren’t around or old enough to remember.
I continue to use 9/11 as a way to frame the beginning of the year, because we spend a lot of time learning historical thinking skills, and learning how historians do the work of studying history.
In the beginning, it was, “What are your memories of the day? Let’s piece it all together.” This is what historians do at its very essence—they collect primary source materials and then try to make some determination about what happened in the past.
At first it was the kids as primary sources. Then as more years passed, the primary sources were parents or family members. And now, it’s mostly looking at primary sources in the classroom—like videos and news reports—because they had less and less contact with people who have their own firsthand recollections.
Is there anything new or different you’re incorporating this year, for the 25th anniversary?
For 9/11 lessons in recent years, I use it as a test case to study history from a present-day lens, like how an event shaped our modern day.
The kids come up with those conclusions themselves based on evidence from primary sources we’ve talked about.
As I was thinking about my lesson [this year], one new element came up, which is that [Mayor Zohran Mamdani] just announced that New York City released 170,000 pages of post-9/11 air quality records that show officials knew about toxic contamination around Ground Zero while publicly calling the air safe. Thousands of other people have died of 9/11-related illnesses.
I’ll present that new information and ask them how that changes their perspective of the attacks.
How do you approach discussions about 9/11 with care, knowing the attacks happened in the city in which your students grew up, even if they don’t remember it themselves?
I always frame it by telling the kids that my job’s not to make them feel what we felt. It’s also good to remind them that this is a class where topics might come up that you might not feel very sensitive about, but you should always approach it with good intent, knowing that it might be sensitive to the person right next to you without them even voicing it.
This personally was a very atrocious day for me because I lived through it. I can’t make you feel that, but you can at least be empathetic to that.
That’s something they have to be mindful of throughout the year, when you’re learning about civil rights, when you’re learning about anything that affects certain individuals, but maybe not everyone. It’s important to approach it with empathy.
How do you manage your own emotions when discussing the attacks that, as you noted, affected you directly?
I always try to not put myself into the room. I let the documents and primary sources do the heavy lifting.
But there are always going to be sensitive topics because teachers are humans.
After teaching for so many years, I’m really good at compartmentalizing, so I do that, because this is not some kind of therapy session for me.
I think it’s an important thing that I’ve often mentioned to new teachers—that you really need to be in touch with yourself and your emotions before you walk into the class.
I’ve gotten into the practice of just being mindful, knowing that this is a sensitive thing for me, but reminding myself that what we’re centering is the students and their study of it.
What advice do you have for other educators trying to teach about 9/11, particularly for teachers who weren’t alive during the attacks?
I think they need to approach it like every topic, which is, don’t put your own views into it, but also be mindful of the fact that there are people whose family members were affected by it.
Give the students the primary sources to build their knowledge base, and provide them with the framework and critical-thinking skills they need to come to conclusions themselves.
