What Happened on 9/11?, Part II

Learning Goals

Students will assess their prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

Students will be introduced to a timeline of key events on the morning of 9/11.

Students will investigate a variety of primary source materials related to the 9/11 attacks.

Students will understand how first-person accounts and multiple perspectives deepen historical study.

Vocabulary

Advocacy: An act by a person or group that pushes for the support of a specific cause or policy.

Catastrophic: Involving or causing great damage or suffering.

Change of tours: The time of day when one group of firefighters finish their shift at the firehouse and prepares to go home, while a new group of firefighters arrives to begin working. Firefighters sometimes refer to their work shifts as tours.

Ground Zero: The World Trade Center site and surrounding area after the collapse of the Twin Towers. The area was filled with 1.8 million tons of debris.

Millenium Hilton: A hotel located across the street from the World Trade Center complex at Church and Fulton streets.

Sky Lobby: A transfer area, located on the 44th and 78th floors in the North and South Towers, that allowed workers in the building to switch between express and local elevators.

Top Gun: This refers to the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program for naval aviators and naval flight officers. It focuses on advanced air combat maneuvering tactics and techniques.

Activity

1.  Tell students that they will use first-person accounts to investigate the experiences of different groups of people on 9/11. These accounts all come from the Museum’s Digital Learning Experience Archive, which is a collection of first-person stories filmed from inside the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Stories are divided into 6 groups: 9/11 Family Members, First Responders, Military, Next Generation, Survivors, and Witnesses.   

2.  Divide students into up to six groups and provide each with a computer or tablet. Tell students that each group will be assigned a first-person account that showcases a member of a specific community. If you do not have access to individual computers, you can select 3-4 narratives to listen to as a class, stopping after each narrative to debrief using the guiding questions included in step four.

3.  Assign each group a stakeholder community (9/11 Family Member, First Responder, Military, Next Generation, Survivor, Witness) to focus on and have them watch or listen to the appropriate first-person narrative based on the list below.

• 9/11 Family Members: Julie Sweeney Roth, wife of Brian Sweeney

• First Responders: Bill Spade, Retired FDNY

• Military: Carlton Shelley II, Emma E. Booker Elementary School

• Next Generation: Brielle Saracini, Daughter of 9/11 Flight Captain Victor J. Saracini

• Survivors: Keating Crown, Aon Corporation

• Witnesses: Captain Richard Thornton, NY Waterways

4. Tell students that as they listen, they should collect information to help answer the following questions (Note: each speaker will share different amounts of information in each category. Some may not address every category):

• What is the speaker’s name?
• Where was the speaker on 9/11? What were they doing?
• Did they face any obstacles or challenges that day?
• How did they respond immediately on 9/11? How did they respond over time?

5. Allow 10 to 15 minutes for students to listen to their source and discuss with their peers.

6. Gather the class and instruct each group to introduce their speaker by sharing the information they collected.

7. Return to the list of questions you made at the beginning of the first lesson and ask students to add additional things they learned about 9/11 from listening to first-person accounts.

8. Conclude by asking students if hearing first-person accounts from so many different types of people changed the way they think about 9/11. If yes, how? If not, why?

Note: Our Digital Learning Experience Archive includes additional narratives for each of these 9/11 stakeholder groups that you can use to expand, further customize, or extend this lesson.