How Centre County educators teach about 9/11 to students who have no memories of the day

Every year, when Chuck Romig taught his 11th grade history students about 9/11, he would ask how many students remembered the day it happened.

“Through the years, fewer and fewer of them recalled it,” said Romig, who teaches at Penns Valley Area High School. “Eventually, it was none of them.”

Now, none of Romig’s students were even born in 2001.

Ahead of Saturday’s anniversary of the 9/11, teachers in Centre County reflected on how their lessons on the terrorist attacks have evolved over the last 20 years.

Diane Lucas, who teaches economics, psychology and sociology at Bald Eagle Area High School, usually shows her students a documentary about 9/11 on its anniversary. In 2002, she could only find one documentary to show, and she played it on a VHS tape.

Lucas said that, in many ways, teaching about 9/11 has gotten easier as time has passed, even though her students today know less about it.

“In the early years it was still, ‘who were we going after,’” Lucas said. “It wasn’t long until I knew who had flown the planes, but the response to go into Iraq or Afghanistan, those were all kind of delayed. And so I think it was harder to do it then, because so much was still just unfolding from it.”

John Coltabaugh, who teaches U.S. History at Bald Eagle Area High School, was on his sixth day of teaching on Sept 11, 2001. He said he also used to rely on documentaries when he taught about the day.

Now, when he teaches about 9/11, Coltabaugh reads from a play written by students and faculty at the high school that was closest to the twin towers, shows a few short documentaries from YouTube and discusses the materials with the students.

In the early 2000s, Coltabaugh would ask students what they remembered about 9/11, or what they were doing when the towers fell. Now, he asks if they know what their parents were doing.

In his honors class on Friday, Coltabaugh said he shared his own memories with students. He asked them to imagine being an air traffic controller, a first responder, flight attendant or passenger on one of the planes, making a call and only getting the answering machine of the person they were trying to reach.

Romig has been teaching for 23 years, and in the years immediately following 9/11, he would discuss subjects like the Patriot Act or America’s foreign policy with his students, sometimes having heated discussions. Now, he has to give a lot more background.

“These kids have no idea what the Patriot Act was, they don’t know that this is why the Department of Homeland Security was created. They have heard of Al Qaeda in most cases, and Osama bin Laden, (but) they have no idea, outside of knowing those names, what any of that’s about,” Romig said.

Lucas said her students are often surprised to see then-New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani appear in documentaries she shows. Lucas, Coltabaugh and Romig all said their students are consistently shocked to see the explosions when the planes hit the twin towers.

“In the past few years, I feel the students have been more impacted by it than before,” Lucas said. “I don’t know if it’s because they maybe (have) relatives that went overseas to fight — that they’re talking about their uncle, (so) they feel connected that way — but I actually think the students are probably more invested in (it) now than they were.”

This story was originally published September 11, 2021 at 2:40 PM.