Friday, August 30, 2002

A College Offers an Online Guide for Teaching About September 11 By BROCK READ As the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon nears, schoolteachers and college professors must determine how to incorporate discussion of the events into their instruction. It can be a difficult task, but it's an important one, says Douglas Stuart, director of Dickinson College's Clarke Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Contemporary Issues. "Frankly, we need a little bit of distance from the events to construct syllabi and lesson plans," says Mr. Stuart. "But it's about time." To help educators prepare for the anniversary, Mr. Stuart and his colleagues at Dickinson have created Teaching 9-11, a Web site that compiles resources for teachers of kindergarteners through college students. "There's an obvious need for resources for teachers," according to Mr. Stuart. "Making Teaching 9-11 was one of the most valuable things we could do." Perhaps the site's most useful feature is a set of links to syllabi and lesson plans that teachers can adapt. The plans range from grade-school resources designed by PBS and The New York Times to descriptions of college courses, such as Middlebury College's freshman seminar "September 11: Causes and Consequences." Teaching 9-11 also includes a list of Web sites that students can use to pursue issues such as Islamic culture, homeland security, cyberterrorism, and post-traumatic stress. Elsewhere, the site collects relevant magazine articles, the texts of speeches by President Bush and Kofi Annan, biographies of key figures, and information on art, music, and photography inspired by the attacks. Clarke Center officials decided to link the site to Web sites they deemed reliable -- those run by universities, government agencies, and major news organizations. "We haven't used anything that's like 'Joe's Web site on 9-11,'" says Jennifer Moll, a graduate assistant at the Clarke Center who spent several weeks scouring the Internet for useful material. Ms. Moll expects the Web site to expand as its administrators field suggestions posted to the page's discussion board, on which teachers are encouraged to share their favorite resources and teaching strategies. "This will probably be a never-ending project," she says. According to Mr. Stuart, one of the Web site's strengths is its comprehensiveness -- which, he argues, provides the project with a sense of balance and objectivity. That's particularly important, he says, because of the fire the National Education Association has drawn for its Web site, "Remembering September 11," which some conservative critics have accused of not sufficiently emphasizing the roles of Al-Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism in the terrorist attacks. The Web site's breadth reflects the broad focus that teachers should take in discussing the events of September 11, argues Ms. Moll. "It's not just about why September 11 happened," she says. "It's also about teaching tolerance, about why America is so ethnically diverse and why that's a good thing." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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