The 9/11 story America’s teachers keep telling

Meanwhile, the 9/11 story America's teachers keep telling Twenty-five years afterwards, educators are using the story of "The Man in the Red Bandanna" to assist a new generation grasp 9/11.

Key points

• Over Memorial Day weekend in 2002, Alison Crowther discovered evidence of her son's last moments.
• Crystal Bozigian teaches at North Providence High School in Rhode Island, one room over from the classroom where she watched live coverage of the Sept.
• She has supported develop a curriculum around her son's story, called The Red Bandanna Project, a reference to the handkerchief survivors saw him wearing on 9/11.
• In the years after 9/11, local schools near the family's home in Nyack, New York, often asked Alison Crowther to speak regarding her son's story.
• For the 25th anniversary, the family's nonprofit, the Welles Remy Crowther Charitable Trust, has revamped it.

Why teachers keep returning to this 9/11 story in the classroom.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, teachers are using this story of heroism to support a new generation learn concerning the attacks.

When the left wing of United Airlines Flight 175 cut through the south tower sky lobby, those who survived the impact didn't know if there was a way out. Then they heard Welles Crowther's voice. "I found the stairs, " he informed them.

Crowther led them to safety, turned around and climbed back into the burning tower. The 24-year-old equities trader saved as plenty of as 18 residents on his three trips to the 78th floor. He didn't survive.

For plenty of Americans, Crowther became a symbol of heroism on 9/11.

He's received a number of posthumous awards, and this year will be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His alma mater, Boston College, annually dedicates a football game and road race in his honor.

Today, Crowther's story is taught to children in more than 40 states. His heroism is among the defining ways students from kindergarten through high school learn regarding the terror attacks.

This year's class of high school seniors were born seven years after 9/11. Most first graders were born in 2019, almost two decades afterwards. For them, 9/11 is a historical event, not a visceral memory.

As educators grapple with how to support the next generation understand the impact of the Sept. 11 attacks, plenty of have come to rely on stories of courage and resilience, like Crowther's, to produce the events more tangible.

"The history is the history, " remarked Crowther's mother, Alison. "I say to young individuals, 'This happened. It was devastating. But you can't live in fear, and you can't be controlled by fear.'".

She has supported develop a curriculum around her son's story, called The Red Bandanna Project, a reference to the handkerchief survivors saw him wearing on 9/11. The project is aimed at encouraging students to focus on lessons from 9/11, including empathy and leadership.

"9/11 should never be forgotten or diminished in any way. It should be addressed in the schools, " Alison Crowther remarked. "You have to move forward."

Like plenty of who lost loved ones on 9/11, Welles Crowther's family didn't know what happened to him until his body was discovered six months after the terror attacks. Recovery workers discovered him lying in debris of what had been the lobby of the south tower. He was next to a group of regarding 10 New York City firefighters, close to the building's exit.

They questioned why he hadn't created it out. Over Memorial Day weekend in 2002, Alison Crowther discovered evidence of her son's last moments. In a New York Times article, "Fighting to Live as the Towers Died, " survivors recounted receiving support from a mysterious man whose face was covered with a red bandanna, like the one her son had carried since childhood. Alison Crowther reached out to those quoted and confirmed the man was Welles. "He kept going back up, " Alison Crowther remarked.

In the years after 9/11, local schools near the family's home in Nyack, New York, often asked Alison Crowther to speak regarding her son's story. Boston College created a Red Bandanna 5K. On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, ESPN published a 13-minute documentary.

"That shot Welles – the story – all around the world, " Alison Crowther remembered.

As more letters from teachers, students, coaches and parents flooded her mailbox, she decided to create a curriculum regarding 9/11 and her son's heroism.

For the 25th anniversary, the family's nonprofit, the Welles Remy Crowther Charitable Trust, has revamped it. The new lessons are free, digitally downloadable for teachers and focused on emotional learning, remarked Kevin Holbrook, project director of the Red Bandanna Project.

It includes short lessons for elementary to middle school students on such topics as teamwork, the "power of one" and caring for others. The exercises ask students to reflect on Welles Crowther's story and think of other examples they've seen of individuals helping others. One middle school assignment asks students why someone like Welles might show love and compassion to a stranger.

"What makes Welles' story so powerful for young individuals is that he wasn't a historical figure from another century. He was a young man, " Holbrook remarked. "He was an ordinary person who made extraordinary choices when it mattered." Teaching the lesson of resilience.

Crystal Bozigian teaches at North Providence High School in Rhode Island, one room over from the classroom where she watched live coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks. When she first began as a history teacher 20 years ago, all her students had similarly vivid memories of where they were when they saw the towers fall. Some of her students today obtain the date of the attacks wrong; they don't know why it's referred to as 9/11.

"That maybe is a piece or a sign that truly it's not part of their history, " Bozigian, 41, remarked.

Still, every year on the anniversary when she begins her lesson, Bozigian remarked, she sees a quizzical gleam in their eyes.

Bozigian shares memories, then plays the ESPN documentary on Welles Crowther. It demonstrates United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the south tower and features harrowing firsthand accounts from survivors Crowther assisted save.

But it additionally focuses on what Crowther's red bandanna has come to represent: selflessness.

Bozigian asks her students if their generation has experienced any defining moments similar to 9/11. Most point to the COVID-19 pandemic: the shutdowns, the isolation, seeing the death toll rise in news media accounts. That lesson, she remarked, helps them understand collective trauma and grief. She additionally asks them to write essays concerning individuals who remind them of Crowther.

" I don't like to spend that day in the dark doldrums, " Bozigian remarked.

"There's the morbid curiosity to watch all the highlights, the newsreels, the documentaries that have painted the terror and the fear. And that's all significant, " she went on. "I just think that our American story. Has always been one of heroism and resilience." A new generation, a different world.

For Katie Jeffers, a high school teacher in Catoosa County, Georgia, Crowther's story serves as an entry point into a discussion regarding the national unity that blossomed after 9/11. Most of Jeffers' students have only memories of a politically divided America.

"I wish that the students that I teach nowadays could witness the solidarity, " Jeffers, 36, remarked. "I tell them, you can be proud of America and not agree with other people's politics."

Jeffers had just begun sixth grade in 2001. She remembers fixating on the terror attacks for months. She watched every news clip she could find, and read as much as feasible concerning the victims and first responders. Against the backdrop of the horror, Jeffers stated, she felt proud of her country's reaction.

"It just awakened something inside of me, like this just huge, immense amount of patriotism, " she remarked.

After college, Jeffers taught elementary school for a few years. While trying to find ways to pass down those lessons from 9/11 to her second-grade class, Jeffers stumbled on the picture book Welles Crowther's sister, Honor Crowther Fagan, wrote.

"I would just kind of start out by gathering them on the carpet and saying 'It's a sad day because some sad things happened, but we're going to focus on the good guys, '" Jeffers remarked.

Next, she would offer each one a red bandanna to assist them relate to the story.

Years afterwards, some of those students identified their way into her high school classroom, and informed her they still had their bandannas on their nightstands.

"That means more to me than any other type of lesson, " Jeffers remarked. Gone longer than he was alive. Welles Crowther has now been gone longer than he was alive.

For Alison Crowther, the 25th anniversary marks an especially somber milestone. Still, she remarked, she takes comfort knowing her son's memory lives on through the young residents learning from his example.

"I just would like people to understand that Welles was such a beautiful soul, as were so many people lost on 9/11, " she remarked. "Embrace the preciousness and the gift of our lives here on this Earth and just work every day to bring good into the world. That's my wish and my hope for individuals of all ages."

For now, the 9/11 story Americas teachers keep telling remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.