This blog offers information, and connections to nurture recent graduates. We welcome your participation on this and on our Facebook Page. The NTC continues to be deeply grateful to MEDITECH for its long history of support for this program. Over the years, MEDITECH has made it possible for the New Teacher Community to serve a vital role in helping our graduates to persist in a challenging, yet deeply rewarding profession.
STEM Week Challenge: Hurricane Heroes! Storm City, MA
How can you empower your students to see themselves in STEM by putting their skills to the test to solve real-world problems that can occur due to extreme weather events? Engage your students in a unique experience that integrates science concepts and the engineering design process in an exciting way! Join the Wade Institute for Science Education, Salem Sound Coastwatch, and Lloyd Center for the Environment from October 18-22, 2021 for the STEM Week Challenge: Hurricane Heroes! Storm City, Massachusetts.
What’s the Challenge? Imagine that a category 6 hurricane has hit Storm City, MA. The city has been flooded by 14 inches of rain and faces several problems that MUST be solved by your engineering team! You must find a way to evacuate people to safety and move floodwaters out of homes and businesses that are without electricity using an innovative design or an alternative source of energy. Students will be challenged to: 1) build a transport vessel that will move 25 people and remain afloat for five minutes and; 2) build a water movement system using gravity or alternative sources of energy to move water 2 km away from homes and businesses.
Teachers, your students won’t have all the fun! Experience Hurricane Heroes! Storm City, MA from the student perspective during an inquiry-based, interactive pre-challenge professional development workshop. Learn how the phenomena-based challenge will allow you to use grade-level appropriate science and technology concepts that address Massachusetts curriculum standards and incorporate engineering concepts with physical and earth science disciplinary core ideas.
Pre-Challenge Teacher Workshop Hosted by: Wade Institute for Science Education; Salem Sound Coastwatch; Lloyd Center for the Environment Option 1: Saturday, September 18th (8:30 AM - 1:30 PM ET) Option 2: Tuesday, September 28th and Wednesday, September 29th (3:30 PM - 6:00 PM ET) Location: Virtual Session(s) Cost: FREE Support: All registered teachers will receive a curriculum guide and support from the three sponsoring organizations. Massachusetts teachers who participate in the pre-challenge teacher workshop will also receive a kit of materials for the challenge.
The Massachusetts STEM Week is sponsored by the Executive Office of Education and the MA STEM Advisory Council. The STEM Week Challenge is funded by a grant from the MA STEM Advisory Council. Hurricane Heroes! Storm City, MA is designed for middle school students but is easily adaptable for upper elementary or high school students. It can take place in your classroom or in remote learning settings. During the week of October 25th, students will have an opportunity to participate in a virtual challenge showcase to share their innovative solutions to real-world problems.
As teachers, we are caretakers by the nature of our positions. Our instinct almost always is to care for our students before we care for ourselves.
This is a noble ideal.
But it is also impossible. Children will always need more, so there is no clear end to the amount of giving a teacher can do. And when teachers give teaching their all, they often end up depleted, drained of the physical and emotional energy to be the sort of skilled practitioner we’d all like to be. Let me say that another way: when educators give so much to their students that they are feeling empty, they do not have the ability to do the sort of high-level thinking and creative work, let alone have the physical stamina to be the excellent teacher their children need. The heroic martyr teacher might make for great film, but it does not make for great instruction.
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This can be a hard thing to hold on to when we are not only romanticized when we act as a martyr but are also encouraged and expected to do so. Many teachers report that they are gaslighted by everyone from their administrators to their colleagues when they raise the question of addressing their own needs. They are repeatedly told how important they are and how they should prioritize their well-being, and then asked to do the exact opposite. From being told they can’t leave a professional development session to go to the bathroom to being expected to use their own money to create classroom libraries to being reminded to only take thirty minutes for lunch during online pandemic learning, these “little” things can collectively destabilize a teacher to the point of burnout. Each of these things feel normal, somewhat doable, sometimes inspirational . . . in theory. Sometimes they come with bragging rights, “I haven’t peed since I left my house this morning!” or “I can’t remember if I even ate today” or “My family conferences went so long the custodial staff kicked us out.” And administratorsor peers impressed with our dedication or commiserating in good-natured ways about the lack of time for ourselves can make it hard to see just how unhealthy these practices become when they become an expected and accepted part of the way teachers work.
Teachers are told to take care of themselves, but then promptly told why they can’t.
“The students need to see your face,” a principal told one teacher who was considering taking a day off for a doctor’s appointment. “And when you aren’t around, those kids don’t learn. When you get back it’s such a mess that you’ll make yourself sicker just trying to catch them all up.” More often than not educators hear that by prioritizing their own needs they are somehow harming children or doing something wrong. Many of us are already prone to putting others first, so it does not take much gaslighting to convince us that putting our own needs off for as long as possible somehow makes us better teachers.
The Teacher Martyr Makes Mistakes, Avoids Risk, and Observes Less
I know this, preach this, and yet am also terrible at following my own admonishments. You may know that I have a disability. It’s a congenital one whose only long-term solution is two major surgeries that the doctors want to put off for as long as possible. It’s mostly manageable if I take care of myself. I need to balance between regular exercise and rest, stretches and physical therapy to stay mobile. I’ll never be a sprinter, but if I take decent care of myself, I can still be fit enough to teach. My doctors and physical therapists have always been crystal clear—if I want to stay in education and be as active as I am, I need to prioritize my health.
And yet, it is so easy to fall into the habit of doing everything else that seems more important than taking care of ourselves. Day after day on social media and in the news, we hear of teachers martyring themselves for the good of their students and their profession. Those are the teachers whose social media posts we share and inspire us. So, by ignoring my own needs and focusing solely on my students, I found myself crawling out of a New York subway train, across a Brooklyn platform, and dragging myself to a bench. It was a busy work week. There was a family night and grading and an end-of-unit celebration. I was staying at school every night until at least 7:00, then getting home and not eating dinner until nearly 9:00, doing some planning and grading before I’d finally collapse in a heap only to repeat the same self-punishing routine the next day. I did this day after day for over a week. No time for healthy eating, resting, stretching, or gentle exercise. Or so I thought. It shouldn’t have come as a shock when I stood up to leave the subway car at my stop that my leg suddenly protested with agonizing pain and an inability to hold my weight. I had no choice but to crawl off. Some kind New Yorkers who saw me crawling helped me find a bench and stayed with me until the school secretary could come pick me up. I don’t know how or when I got to the emergency room, but I do remember my principal standing over me, after he was assured I would be OK, his finger pointed in my face, saying, “You can’t do this. It’s not good for you. And it’s not helping anyone.”
You probably know all this. You have probably either lectured someone else or been lectured on how important it is to take care of yourself. Maybe you even have your own version of my subway crawling story. Perhaps for you it was pneumonia, bronchitis, or dizzy spells so bad you were hospitalized. You promised yourself you would never let it get that bad again because you saw how bad it was for everyone. But you might not have been considering how not prioritizing self-care affects the topic we’ve been considering throughout this book: mistakes.
When we are depleted, we are so much more likely to make mistakes we regret. These mistakes might just be the sloppy ones like leaving the cap off our beloved whiteboard purple marker or forgetting our keys in the teacher’s lounge. But they can also be very high-stakes mistakes—ones that can dramatically affect children’s lives. We might not have the capacity to write all of the letters of recommendations our students request. We might not carefully read the accommodations on a student’s individualized education program and miss key provisions. As you sit there reading this paragraph, you might be thinking about mistakes you have made recently, or maybe ones you made a long time ago that still haunt you. Before you begin to flagellate yourself for that error that just bubbled up again, is it possible that when you made that mistake, you hadn’t been your best self in terms of selfcare? That you might have been tired, hungry, stressed, overwhelmed, or all of the above before you made that regrettable error?
When I look back at the mistakes I made in my own classroom or with teachers in theirs, I have to admit most of them wouldn’t have happened if I had taken care of my physical, mental, and emotional state a bit more. Use the chart inFigure 3–1to help think about your own examples.
I know that I can never hear too much about how the best defense against mistakes is a good offense. If I want to be the best educator (parent, friend, spouse, citizen) I can be, I need to take care of myself first. All other tacks and strategies will be useless without those things. I know you know this. And, if you spend any time on social media at all, you have no doubt seen the countless memes and articles extolling you to focus on self-care. If you are at all like me, you swing from rolling your eyes at people’s self- centeredness to working so hard you hit a point if you don’t do something (bubble bath, sip of tea, just one night of eight hours of sleep) you feel you will implode. That said, we are human and our souls and bodies need to be fed. We need time to laugh with loved ones, fill our minds with rich ideas and art, yes, and even time to rest and recuperate. Even lying on the couch losing ourselves in a great binge-watch can be soul-feeding self-care. Pleasure is more than a treat. As the legendary performance artist Penny Arcade says, “Pleasure is a radical value” (2016). It is a value that goes a long way toward helping us to lead meaningful and joyful lives. If we do not do the work of prioritizing our own mental and physical health outside the classroom, there might be a time where we start to look for affirmation, connectedness, and care from the students in our own classrooms. As Jaleel Howard, Tanya Milner-McCall, and Tyrone Howard (2020) wrote in their book No More Teaching Without Positive Relationships (full disclosure, I coedited this book with Nell Duke), “Teachers need to share themselves with students but have their emotional needs met elsewhere.” We should not expect our kids to make us feel good about ourselves. If educators are spending all day with students and then every waking moment preparing to work with them again, there is no way we can prioritize our other adult relationships. And that need for connection may unconsciously lead us to seek affirmation from our students.
Even if it’s just feeling good whenever we go above and beyond. Although it might feel right or somewhat saintly to give everything we’ve got to our students, in the end if we do not care for ourselves outside of the classroom or are not bringing our best selves to the classroom, we might instead feel bitter and taken for granted. Or, even in some cases, we might become emotionally needy around students,seeking their approval, comfort, and affirmation, which sets up an unhealthy dynamic where kids are unknowingly trying to fulfill an adult’s emotional needs and also developing an unhealthy sense of what a healthy teacher–student relationship should look like.
Although it is completely understandable to realize after the fact that the likely causeof an error was that we were not taking care of ourselves the way we should, it is less understandable and yet still very common to then not try to prevent another error by taking steps to put ourselves first. It feels strange. It feels selfish. Even our own mentors and teachers were probably models of martyrdom, and although they very likely encouraged us to take care of ourselves, they probably rarely if ever modeled it. The script everyone shows us to follow is teacher martyr.
Yet, we know in our marrow that our last regrettable mistake was very likely made because of our lack of self-care. The thing is, not prioritizing ourselves doesn’t just make us vulnerable to regrettable mistakes. When we are depleted, we are also much more likely to not take the risks we need to take to make the good mistakes.
Think about it. Think about your limited energy and the level and depth of energy it takes to try something new, be creative, or take a pedagogical risk. When you do not prioritize your own health, rest, and happiness, you are less likely to have the energy to take the sorts of risks that lead to our aha moments or stretch mistakes. When you spend hours reading through summative assessments without a break, racing against the clock to get them all marked in time, you are significantly less likely to decide now is the time to try some of the latest ideas around high-quality and growth mindset–based feedback. That sort of work requires energy to take a risk as well as time to fix any trouble spots. So instead, you might do a quick online search for “great feedback for students” and click on the link that offers “100 positive phrases to use when giving student feedback.” (SeeFigure 3–2for other options.)
Contrary to popular belief, stretching past our comfort zones for most of us requires a calm, rested, focused self. Very few of us are tempted to push ourselves and our thinking and to challenge our most dearly held beliefs when we are feeling bad emotionally and physically. Those stretch mistakes that we encourage our kids to make require a basic foundation of self-care to be practiced.
Sept. 11, 2001, is one of those rare days that, if you ask most adults what they remember, they can tell you exactly where they were, whom they were with and what they were thinking. It is a day seared in memory. But for students who were born in a post-9/11 world and have grown up in the aftermath, it is complex history that needs to be remembered, taught and analyzed like any other historical event.
Twenty years ago, four commercial planes were hijacked by operatives from the radical Islamist group Al Qaeda. One plane was flown into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and two others were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A fourth hijacked plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa. Almost 3,000 people died that day, including more than 400 emergency workers.
On Sept. 30, we are hosting a free event, featuring Times journalists, for students that will look at how Sept. 11 has shaped a generation of young people who grew up in its aftermath.Teachers and students can register here, and students can submit their own videos with questions, many of which we hope to feature during the live event.
Inevitably, someday there will be no one alive with a personal narrative of Sept. 11. Inevitably, the emotional impact of the day will fade a little bit, and then a little bit more, as time transforms a visceral lived experience into a dry history lesson. This transformation has already begun; ask any high school history teacher.
Or, ask any student. They are at the center of the transition that Mr. Barry describes.
Invite students to respond to one or more of the following questions, and share their responses with other students from around the world by responding toour related Student Opinion question:
What does Sept. 11 mean to you? Is it mostly a “dry history lesson” or does it resonate for you in deeper ways?
What do you know about the events that took place on Sept. 11? Where and how did you learn about them?
What questions do you have about that day and what happened next?
Have the events of Sept. 11 and its aftermath affected you personally in any way? If so, how? How do you think they may have shaped your generation as a whole?
The Student Opinion prompt is intended to prepare students to participate in our live panel on Sept. 30 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Teachers and students can register for the eventhere; students can submit their questionshere— we might use them during the panel.
Note: To ensure your class has a shared understanding of what happened on Sept. 11, you might want to have students watch thistwo-minute videoor scroll through thisinteractive timeline, both created by the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Alternatively, students can watch thisfive-minute videofrom the History Channel which is focused on the attacks at the World Trade Center.
Although teenagers today are too young to have their own personal memories of Sept. 11, people they know and love do. The Choices Program at Brown University has created alesson planthat walks students through the process of conducting an interview about Sept. 11 with someone they know while also considering the importance of oral history.
Theaccompanying student handoutsuggests questions that students may want to ask, such as: What were you doing on Sept. 11, 2001? How did you find out about the attacks?
After conducting their interviews, students can share what they have learned in small groups and with the class. They might even create an oral history book or site that they can share with future classes.
Newspapers have been described as “history’s first draft.” Reporters and editors from around the world who published on the morning of Sept. 12 had less than a day to figure out how to make sense of what happened for their readers.
Invite students to look closely at the New York Timesfront page(or thefull paper) from that day. They can click on the individual articles as well. What do they notice? What questions does the front page bring up for them? What do they learn about coverage on that first day?
Then they can investigate front pages from other newspapers from around the world and across the country. TheNewseum(you’ll need to create a free account) provides images of front pages of over 100 newspapers from dozens of cities — from Anchorage and Richmond, Va., to Turku, Finland, and Osaka, Japan. Business Insider compiled some of the images from the Newseum’s archival, to show what the front pages of newspapers from around the world looked like onSept. 12.
Students can choose three or four front pages and take note of the similarities and differences that they see in coverage; what choices might they have made had they been editors that day; and what additional questions these front pages raise for them.
4. Look Closely at Archival Photos
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The funeral for Father Judge, the Fire Department chaplain who died on Sept. 11 just after giving last rites to a firefighter.Related Slide ShowCredit...Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Photographs can be a powerful and accessible way for students to learn more about what happened on and after Sept. 11. Students can study the New York Times photo collection “The Towers’ Rise and Fall,” which was originally published on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, to see what stories these 72 images tell about the World Trade Center, the terrorist attacks and the aftermath.
Or, you can invite students to take on the role of curator in a museum who is creating an exhibit about Sept. 11 in New York. They can choose only six to eight photographs to tell the story. Which images would they select and why?
5. Listen to and Read First-Person Stories
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Kayla Bergeron worked in the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, as a high-ranking official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.Related ArticleCredit...Melissa Golden for The New York Times
Students can watch one or more of the three-minute videos from the “Portraits Redrawn” series that was created by The Times for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. The six videos are all interviews with people who had a family member die in the attacks.
They can watchthis 10-minute videofrom VICE in which a civilian mariner talks about assisting with the world’s largest boat lift that rescued half a million people from Lower Manhattan.
They can also watch this 12-minuteRetroReport videothat features interviews with emergency workers who survived the attacks at the World Trade Center and do all or part of this relatedlesson plan(andstudent activity).
Or, students can readthis articleabout a survivor navigating life with post-traumatic stress disorder after the attack on the World Trade Center.
After watching or reading, they can consider: What have you learned about Sept. 11 by hearing stories of survivors, families and people who died in the attacks? And, how do first-person stories change, or deepen, your understanding of what happened?
6. Consider the Importance of Memory
Video
TRANSCRIPT
0:00/18:13
Op-Docs: Where the Towers Stood
The World Trade Center wreckage once smoldered here. Now visitors come from around the world to learn, remember and grieve the loss of 9/11.
[somber music playing] [airplane engine] See it? Yeah. Am I just seeing things? Oh, jeez. Oh, they’re people. Oh. Oh, jeez, they’re people. They’re people. They’re people. [quiet music playing] I’m going to take us right here to this tree where there in shade and there is sun, so you could have which ever you prefer. So we don’t get in everyone’s way, if we can stay over here on the left hand side, we’ll be in good shape. The memorial is designed for you to make physical contact with it, to actually touch the names. So do not feel that the appropriate behavior that shows respect is to be standoffish. It is not. The only thing that we do ask — and I really doubt that any of you would have the impulse to do this anyhow — do not put things on the name. Coats, elbows, cups, bags, anything like that. The other thing I want to say to you is this was truly — you’re an international group of people — this was the World Trade Center. People from over 90 countries died here that morning. They were Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists. Some made their way in the world washing dishes, others ran powerful companies, but almost every single one of them dies that morning because they do something that all of us do with most of our lives — they woke up and they went to work. [somber music playing] Excuse me. Hello. Hello, hello, hello. There’s no smoking in the plaza. No smoking in the plaza. That’s quite all right. Thank you. So I want to talk to you about the pools. Directly in front of you is the south pool. The south pool stands in the footprint of the South Tower, World Trade Center number two. So that’s exactly where World Trade Center number two stood. Can everyone see that line of trees that goes around the pool? That line of trees represents the outer wall of the building. So that means in a few minutes when we go up to see the falls and you go past those trees, you will be standing in what was once the lobby of World Trade Center number two. You’re going to see the falls. The falls come out in individual rivulets, one for each person killed on 9/11. Goes down about 20 feet or so into a huge pool. In the center of the pool, another opening goes on another 10 feet or so. No matter how hard you try, you can’t see the bottom of that opening because it’s a void, and the void is a symbol of the emptiness that we feel here over the loss of life. I’m sure all of you can see the water under the names. That water comes directly from the pool. What someone will do, visiting a loved one — and please feel free to do the very, very same — take their hand, put it in the water, rub their hand over a name. Water, of course, a symbol of life. And notice how the names are on the wall. They are not arranged in alphabetical order. For example, people who worked in the same office in this building, they’re together. Firefighters out on the same firehouse, together. Police officers out of the same police precinct, together. We call that meaningful adjacencies. People together in death just the way they were together in life. I have a stupid question. The names of the killers. Are they — Absolutely not. Not. Absolutely not. Yeah. The only place you’ll find them is if you should go into the museum, there’s a special part that deals with Al Qaeda. [somber music playing] [water cascading] [somber music playing]
00:00
18:14
18:14Op-Docs: Where the Towers Stood
The World Trade Center wreckage once smoldered here. Now visitors come from around the world to learn, remember and grieve the loss of 9/11.CreditCredit...Sara Newens
To learn more about the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, students can watch the above18-minute videofrom our Film Club series. Then, they can respond to the questions below in writing or discussion.
What moments in this film stood out for you? Why?
Were there any surprises? Anything that challenged what you know — or thought you knew?
What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from this film? Why?
What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?
Then, students can read a 2019 article about theopening of the 9/11 Memorial Gladein Lower Manhattan — a memorial for people, largely rescue and recovery workers, whose illnesses and deaths came years after Sept. 11, 2001.
After watching the video and reading the article, students can reflect on the following questions in a class discussion:
Why do we memorialize people or events? What purpose should a memorial serve?
What purpose does memorializing Sept. 11 serve? How do you think Sept. 11 can be most effectively or meaningfully memorialized?
What concerns or challenges should societies or organizations be mindful of when they create memorials? Why?
If you’re interested in furthering the conversation about the memorial in your class, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum has acollection of resourcesfor teachers and students.
How the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks led to decades of war.
Officials who drove the decades-long war in Afghanistan look back on the strategic mistakes and misjudgments that led to a 20-year quagmire.
Two decades after invading Afghanistan, the United States is withdrawing, leaving chaos in its wake and the country much as it found it 20 years ago. “The Taliban don’t just control Kabul, but the whole country.” How did a war that began in response to the 9/11 attacks become the longest in American history? “If somebody had told me in 2001 that we were going to be there for another 20 years, I would not have believed them.” And what lessons can be learned for the future? “We were doing the same thing year after year after year, expecting a different result.” “Nearly 2,400 Americans have died in Afghanistan.” “More than 43,000 Afghan civilians lost their lives.” “You can’t remake a country on the American image. You can’t win if you’re fighting people who are fighting for their own villages and their own territory. Those were lessons we thought we learned in Vietnam. And yet, 30, 40 years later, we end up in Afghanistan, repeating the same mistakes.” On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla., when he received word of an attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. “We’re looking at a live picture of the, of the building right now. And, uh, what would you say? That would be about the 90th floor or so?” The president joined his staff in an empty classroom, where his C.I.A. intelligence briefer, Michael Morell, had been watching the attack unfold. “There was a TV there and the second plane hit.” “Oh my goodness.” “Oh God.” “There’s another one.” “Oh.” “Oh my goodness, there’s another one.” “God.” “And when that happened, I knew that this was an act of terrorism.” At the Capitol in Washington, Representative Barbara Lee’s meeting was interrupted. “I heard a lot of noise saying, ‘Evacuate. Leave. Get out of here. Run fast.’ So, I ran up Independence Avenue. As I turned around, I was able to see a heck of a lot of smoke.” “Another aircraft, unbelievably, has crashed into the Pentagon.” “What you have to understand is this is the largest attack ever in the entire history of the country.” At 9:59 a.m., the second World Trade Center tower to be struck collapsed. Twenty-nine minutes later, the other tower followed. “The president, he asked to see me in his office on Air Force One. The president looked me in the eye and he said, ‘Michael, who did this?’ I told the president that I would bet my children’s future that Al Qaeda was responsible for this attack.” Within hours, evidence surfaced that Al Qaeda, a multinational terrorist organization headed by the Islamic fundamentalist Osama Bin Laden, had committed the attacks. The group was being given safe haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime. “The president’s inclination was to hit back and hit back hard.” “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people — ” “So the president decided to go to war.” “ — And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” “We had to go to Afghanistan. There’s no question in any of our minds, it’s a war of necessity. We had to go after Al Qaeda, we had to kill them, we had to get them out, and we had to pursue them to the ends of the earth.” “The word on the street was everyone’s got to be united with the president. You know, the country is in mourning.” Three days after the attacks, Lee was under pressure to vote yes on a resolution in Congress to authorize going to war against Al Qaeda and its allies when she heard a eulogy at a memorial service. “That as we act, we not become the evil we deplore.” “It was at that point I said, We need to think through our military response, our national security response and the possible impact on civilians.” “Mr. Speaker, members, I rise today really with a very heavy heart. One that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.” “Got back to the office and all hell was breaking loose.” “The only dissenting voice was Democrat Barbara Lee of California, voting no.” “Phone calls, threats. People were calling me a traitor. She’s got to go. But I knew then it was going to set the stage for perpetual war.” Within weeks of 9/11, the U.S. struck back in Afghanistan. “The United States military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime.” Soon after, U.S. ground troops arrived in the country. “The invasion was a success very quickly.” “At the gates of Kabul, news of a Taliban collapse had already reached these thousands.” “The Taliban retreat has turned into a rout.” “By the end of the year, the Taliban had been driven from power. A large number of Al Qaeda operatives had either been killed or captured.” And although Osama Bin Laden had managed to escape, the U.S. had accomplished its main goal. “Al Qaeda could not operate out of Afghanistan anymore.” President Bush knew there was a history of failed military campaigns in Afghanistan. “We know this from not only intelligence but from the history of military conflict in Afghanistan. It’s been one of initial success followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We’re not going to repeat that mistake.” [Applause] But after his initial success, Bush expanded the mission to nation-building. To prevent further Al Qaeda attacks, his administration said it wanted to transform the poor, war-torn country into a stable democracy, with a strong central government and U.S.-trained military. “The idea was it would be impossible for the Taliban to ever return to power and impossible for Afghanistan to ever be used as a safe haven again.” “There were girls starting to go to school, there were clinics and hospitals being set up, there were vaccinations, there were elections planned. Everything was kind of humming along and we all thought, OK, this is going to be fine.” But by the mid-2000s, after the Bush administration expanded the war on terror to Iraq, Richard Boucher realized that the U.S.-backed Afghan government was plagued by corruption and mismanagement. “I used to say to my guys on the Afghan desk, ‘If we’re winning, how come it don’t look like we’re winning?’” “The Taliban have staged a major comeback, seizing control of large swaths of the country.” “The people were not rejecting the Taliban. And that was, in the end, because the government couldn’t deliver much for the people. Everybody had this idea in their heads that government works the way it does in Washington. But Afghanistan hasn’t worked that way in the past. I think that was a moment we should’ve at least asked ourselves whether it wasn’t really time for us to leave and to say to the Afghans, ‘It’s your place, you run it as best you can.’” Instead, by 2011, President Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, had sent nearly 50,000 more troops to Afghanistan, hoping to reverse the Taliban’s gains. “I think one of the biggest mistakes we made strategically, after 9/11, was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here. We got distracted by Iraq.” One of those troops was Marine Captain Timothy Kudo. Part of his job was to shore up support for the government by digging wells and building schools. He soon lost faith in that mission after, he says, his company killed two Afghan teenagers they mistakenly believed were firing on them. “And their family saw this happen. The mothers, the grandmothers, they came out. It was the first time I’d ever seen an Afghan woman without wearing a burqa. They were sobbing and crying uncontrollably. I mean, how can you kill two innocent people and expect anything that you say to matter at that point?” “People here have little faith in U.S. forces anymore. More Afghans now blame the violence here on the U.S. than on the Taliban.” Weeks after Kudo returned home from Afghanistan, there was a monumental development. “I started getting all these texts, like, ‘You’ve got to check out the TV.’ My roommate calls me from the other room. ‘Turn on CNN.’” “The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.” “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” “In that moment, people are celebrating in front of the White House. They’re celebrating by Ground Zero.” “This is where it happened. We’re back. It’s justice!” “And to my mind, there’s no more reason to go through this madness. And, of course, we then did it for another decade.” “I think the military and the national security apparatus thought they could win. And I think that they also wanted to believe that because they had invested so much. People had died and they didn’t want them to die in vain.” “2011, Bin Laden is now dead. Why was it so hard to de-escalate?” Jeffrey Eggers was on President Obama’s National Security Council. He says that the goal since 9/11, to make sure Afghanistan would never again be a safe haven for terrorists, had become a recipe for endless war. “We will forever prevent the conditions that led to such an attack.” “Danger close!” [Gunfire] “And if you define it that way, when are you finished?” [Gunfire] “Go! Come on, come on, come on!” Though the surge failed to push back the Taliban, the U.S. drew down troop levels even as doubts were growing that Afghan forces would be able to defend the country. In 2021, President Biden, the fourth president to preside over the war, announced that he would withdraw U.S. troops, a plan set in motion by his predecessor, Donald Trump. “Nobody should have any doubts. We lost the war in Afghanistan.” “And we’re clear to cross?” “It wasn’t a peace agreement; it was a withdrawal agreement. The agreement was essentially, As we withdraw, don’t attack us.” As the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, the Taliban is taking over again, having quickly overrun the Afghan Army, which the U.S. spent more than $80 billion to train and equip. “The Taliban are out in full force. And their Islamist rule is already coming back.” “They can use this as a recruiting tool. They are now the champions of the jihadi movement because they pushed out the United States.” And U.S. officials are reflecting on the beginning of the war, 20 years after 9/11. “More people should have thought about endless war, not just in Congress but in the State Department, in the Defense Department, C.I.A. and elsewhere, in the White House. That the recipe of using military means to go after terrorism was just going to get us into one fight after another after another. One can only hope that Americans of the new generation will think about this.”
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11:47How the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks led to decades of war.
Officials who drove the decades-long war in Afghanistan look back on the strategic mistakes and misjudgments that led to a 20-year quagmire.
In anaddress to Congress and the nationon Sept. 20, 2001, President George W. Bush made it clear that the response to the terrorist attacks would not be confined to a single military strike on one group, network or country: “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
Help students uncover the motivation behind the attacks and evaluate the international repercussions of the “war on terror” using the following resources:
The Terrorist Attack:Who was responsible for the attacks on Sept. 11? Why did they target the United States, and particularly civilians?BritannicaandUSA Todayeach offer brief summaries of the plot and the roles of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. To go more in depth, you might have students watch the three-part documentary series “Road to 9/11” from the History Channel, which provides a 360-degree overview of events that led to the attack.
To help students understand why the World Trade Center, Pentagon and U.S. Capitol were targeted, see the 9/11 Memorial and Museum lesson plan, “Targeting American Symbols.”
The U.S. Response and the Global “War on Terror”:On Oct. 7, 2001, just weeks after the attacks,Mr. Bush announcedthat America had started a bombing campaign against Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks, and the Taliban, the group that harbored them in Afghanistan.
So began the longest war in American history, which ended this year with the removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. What did the war accomplish? Use our Lesson of the Day on “The U.S. War in Afghanistan: How It Started, and How It Ended” to have students evaluate the causes and consequences of the 20-year conflict. They can also watch the 10-minuteRetroReport video(embedded above), which looks at the decisions that shaped the war. And, they can use our Lesson of the Day “What Will Become of Afghanistan’s Post-9/11 Generation?” about how the lives of young people in Afghanistan have suddenly changed with the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Beyond The Times, see the five-part lesson plan “The Costs of War,” created by the Choices Program, which examines the human, economic, social and political costs of the “war on terror” through videos and class discussions.
Veterans of the War in Afghanistan:Listen to voices of veterans in The Argument podcast episode “You Don’t Bring Democracy at the Point of a Gun” or read about their experiences in the essay “Serving in a Twenty Year War.” How do these firsthand accounts and perspectives change how students understand the realities of the so-called war on terror? What questions would they ask these veterans if they were New York Times reporters?
After exploring one or more of the pieces in this section, students might discuss the prompts below:
What is terrorism? Why do some individuals and groups target civilians for political purposes?
Was the United States justified in using military force in Afghanistan after Sept. 11? What is the legacy of the “war on terror”? Has it made us safer?
What lessons can we learn from the war? How do you think the United States and other countries should work toward preventing future terrorist attacks? If the United States, or another country, were hit by foreign terrorism again in the future, how should we respond? What principles, critical questions and experiences should help us form our response?
8. Examine Ripple Effects in the United States
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Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota successfully challenged the 181-year rule banning headwear in the House chamber.Related ArticleCredit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
In the two decades since Sept. 11, many aspects of American life have changed, from travel andartto education andimmigration. Your conversation with students about post-9/11 America could take on any one or many of these topics. Below, we suggest two possible lenses, based on recent Times texts, through which to examine the ripple effects in the United States:
Muslims in America: Invite students to read “Muslim Americans’ ‘Seismic Change’” by Elizabeth Dias and consider how the aftermath of Sept. 11 has brought both challenges, including a surge in Islamophobia, but also possibilities for the Muslim American community, such as the election of Muslim Americans to Congress and award-winning television featuring Muslim American actors and stories, that would have been unfathomable 20 years ago.
Civil Liberties and Surveillance:Two decades after the attacks, police departments across the United States, and particularly the N.Y.P.D., are using counterterrorism tools, like facial recognition software, to combat routine street crime. Although police officials say these methods have helped thwart would-be attacks, others say they subject everyday people to “near-constant surveillance — a burden that falls more heavily on people of color.” Invite students to read “How the N.Y.P.D. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday New Yorkers” and debate the benefits and drawbacks of these tactics.
After reading one or both of these articles, students might discuss the following questions:
In what important ways has Sept. 11 transformed American life?
Did anything described in the articles connect with anything you’ve experienced, read or witnessed? How have these changes affectedyourlife, whether you knew it or not?
What does America’s response to Sept. 11 say about the United States today?
9. Explore Why Conspiracy Theories Sometimes Flourish
Conspiracy theories can either be malicious, dumb fun, or anything in between. Some conspiracy theories can be serious and about tragedies such as 9/11, but some conspiracy theories can be interesting, such as bots in a video game being alive. I enjoy a conspiracy theory every now or then, but I wouldn’t take them as an absolute truth, you always have to take them with a grain of salt.
In the article “How a Viral Video Bent Reality,” Kevin Roose writes about how the conspiracy film “Loose Change” energized the “9/11 truther” movement and also supplied the template for the current age of disinformation.
Students can read this article and consider some of the questions raised in the article:
Why do you think some people are drawn to conspiracy theories?
What role does technology play in the spread of conspiracy theories?
Respond to this quote from the article: “A more urgent lesson to take from ‘Loose Change’ is that conspiracy theories tend to flourish in low-trust environments, during periods of change and confusion.” Why do you think that is? How does that lesson apply to today’s world?
You can pair this article with the Student Opinion question mentioned above, inviting students to post their own comments in response to that question, or with ourLesson of the Day “How to Deal With a Crisis of Misinformation,”which includes strategies for countering misinformation.
10. Join Our Live Panel for Students: The Post-9/11 Generation
How did 9/11 shape the generation that grew up in its aftermath?
With New York Times journalists and student voices, we will discuss this question at our special interactive panel on Sept. 30. The panel will feature Yousur Al-Hlou and Biz Herman, who examined how Sept. 11 has been taught in classrooms around the world, and Kiana Hayeri, who photographed young Afghans as they experienced the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country.
We encourage students to submit 30-second videos containing questions for the panelists or reflections onwhat Sept. 11 means to them. Register for the panelhere, and submit student questions throughthis form.
Want more? For the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, in 2011, we publishedthis roundup of hundreds of resourcesfrom The Learning Network and The New York Times for teaching about Sept. 11 and the aftermath, including ideas from educators across the country and links to the front pages of The Times for the 10 days after Sept. 11.
Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education.@nicoleolived
