Modern America, Day 2 - Class Recap

This is part of N591UA, which operate United Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001, and was hijacked for possible use against the White House. Instead, a passenger revolt forced down the plane into a field in Pennsylvania. A part of my 9/11 story is that I once flew on that exact same plane, from Portland to Chicago in 1996. Check out my FlightMemory map of lifetime flights.

Hello wonderful students,

Today, I tried to do as much as I could with explaining the current "War on Terror" that United States has been involved with. It was the last real day of new content - next class will be a study day, combined with playing Jeopardy to review some of the main points of the semester. Here's the class recap for today:

Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day. Selected because we discussed the events of September 11th, 2001 today in class. Lyrics (which some may argue directly relate to the War on Terror) here.

AGENDA 6/3/14:
News Brief
Fall of the Wall
9/11
Afghanistan/The F Word

Homework: Review notes for upcoming in class final. Read the blog! Next news brief: David.

News Brief: Miles chose this story to talk about for his news brief: CNN.com - 12-year-old Wisconsin girl stabbed 19 times; friends arrested. Apparently this was done to impress a fictional character? Wow. Please be good to yourself and each other, everyone.

Fall of the Wall: This was left over from last class. I wanted to explain how the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Iron Curtain and Communism in Europe, and how the United States helped bring it down. Specifically, we noted that President Ronald Reagan asked the USSR to "tear down this wall!" Here's the video we watched in class:

History.com - Deconstructing History: Berlin Wall

At the same time as the wall was being torn down, the Soviet Union was collapsing - late 1989 into 1990. Those factors also contributed to the First Gulf War, with Iraq, which we talked about later on.

9/11: To start this section, I asked students to do a free write for about 5 minutes on the following questions:

What do you know about September 11th, 2001? What have you heard about it? Do you remember anything? What have you learned before, in class, or from parents?

After the free write time, we shared responses as a class and I told my story about September 11th. I was starting my Sophomore year at Wilson High School in Portland. It was definitely a day I will remember for the rest of my life. To drive home the point as to what the day was like, I showed this video in class, which was a timeline of the day:

From there, I moved on to discussing how September 11th, 2001 came about.

Afghanistan/The F Word: Some of this material was from my Global Studies class I taught last year a long term sub, so I apologize if this was the second time around for a few students in class. I thought it was important to look at the conflict from a United States perspective. Here's the PowerPoint presentation I went through:

Google Drive: Understanding Afghanistan PowerPoint

I wanted students to take general notes about what led to September 11th and how the First Gulf War between the United States and Iraq helped influence it. We are still currently involved in a war in Afghanistan - it is now America's longest war. Over 2,200 American soldiers have died as a part of it.

The "F" word that we talked about in class was FEAR. To start to look at how fear played a role after September 11th, I showed a couple of videos:

This is United States Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing the United Nations about the "weapons of mass destruction" that the U.S. government thought was in Iraq. It turned out that there were not any such weapons.

This video contains a montage of President George W. Bush and many of the key figures in his government repeating words in speeches that sounded pretty scary.

The last bit to class was another free write. This time, it was about fear in our lives. 

The prompt was: write about a time in which you experienced fear and how you felt. 

After writing and sharing in partners, I asked for volunteers to share with the class. It is nice to be able to look back on scary moments in life and laugh, or just be thankful that we escaped out of it. It was also good to hear about how fear makes us feel - anxious, wanting to do anything to escape, and not wanting to experience it again.

I wanted to make the connection between the fear much of America felt after 9/11. In fact, one of the ways that the government might have helped keep people fearful (or ready) is by making a threat level color coded system.:

In the entire history of the threat level system (which ended under President Obama), the threat level never went below Elevated - meaning we were supposed to be at "significant risk of terrorist attacks," constantly. I ended class by asking that you think about what that might do to people who could be afraid of another terrorist attack.

Whew. With that, the rest of the semester will be review. I tried to pack as much as I could in! Let me know if I can answer any more questions - I really appreciated them all today in class! See you next time!