Long Island school tributes a lesson on 9/11 for students

Each year around Sept. 11, Frank Musto takes his art students outside their Commack High School classroom to a memorial made of steel. 

The students observe, reflect on and sketch the memorial, which was erected in 2012 and is made of steel from the Twin Towers. 

For most adults, Sept. 11, 2001, was a defining moment of their lives — one that Americans swore they would never forget. For children and teenagers across Long Island, some of whom lost relatives in the terrorist attacks, what they know of those family members, and anything else connected to that day nearly 21 years ago, has been gleaned from parents, classroom lessons, books or television.

Valuable lessons — about history, about loss — live within the chunk of steel sitting on the Commack High campus, Musto said.

"Now, I'm teaching kids that were [not] alive [then]," Musto said. "They don't have any memories of it, obviously, and that's why it's important to keep the story alive … When you see that piece of metal that was there and the way it changed the world and the way we see everything, it [becomes] emotional."

Several other Long Island schools have memorials dedicated to 9/11 victims.

Campus tributes can deepen students' connection to the attacks and bolster their understanding of what happened, said Alan Singer, the director of secondary education social studies at Hofstra University.

It is important for students to have symbols to represent a complex idea, he said. Memorials, which encourage the act of remembering, can be those symbols and also preserve memories that might otherwise fade over time.

"It's ancient history for them," said Singer of children in a post-9/11 world, where tighter airport security and the fear of terrorism is a way of life.

"9/11 is not part of their lived experience."

For Garden City High School students Liam Brennan, 16, and Brooke Hopkins, 15, their campus memorial provides a way to strengthen an emotional connection to the collapse of the Twin Towers, which took the life of Brennan's uncle, who worked in one of the towers.

Hopkins' father worked near the World Trade Center and was forced to evacuate. He previously worked in one of the towers and had many friends still there on Sept. 11, 2001. Hopkins' uncle, a firefighter, responded to Ground Zero and lost colleagues. 

"When you see it, it just makes it more real," Brennan said. "That is part of the Trade Center. It's not any video or article you're reading, it's really there. It was a little surreal and eye-opening."

The Garden City memorial embodies the personal stories of 9/11 first responders, victims, witnesses and survivors, said Jeannette Balantic, the Garden City High social studies coordinator. Michele De Collibus, a social studies teacher at the school, required students to complete a 9/11 oral history project to commemorate the 20th anniversary, where they interviewed adults about that day. Students honoring and remembering the personal accounts of the tragedy is what will keep it alive both inside and outside the classroom, according to Balantic and De Collibus. 

Hopkins said that she and fellow students have no personal connection to other life-altering events for previous generations, like the attack on Pearl Harbor. She hopes that future generations will remember 9/11. 

"It's scary to think that in a few generations to come that they’re going to forget about it," Hopkins said.

Bay Shore Middle School also has a piece of World Trade Center steel dedicated to locals who died in the attacks. Like Musto, social studies teacher Greg D'Antoni takes his students to view the memorial each September. 

"It just makes it more of a real event," D'Antoni said. "As an educator, you always want to make the kids emotionally aware, which is kind of tough to do. But when you look at the piece of steel, it's got a dent in it … It’s quite a tremendous teaching tool."

While 9/11 is a curriculum staple, D'Antoni said the way he presents it changes based on current events and the connections that can be drawn. With the pandemic, he said his students better understood the ways an event can spur shared grief and trauma — and the ways communities come together. 

Students learn about the heartbreak and events that unfolded in the aftermath of 9/11, but Bay Shore teachers also focus on the "compassion and generosity demonstrated in the wake of the attacks," said Superintendent Steven Maloney, who was on his third day as middle school principal on the day of the attacks.

"It is our responsibility as educators to help young adults understand the tragedy in the same way we helped previous generations understand Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President Kennedy," he said. 

The best way to do that, students and teachers said, is to continue discussing it in the classroom, even outside of September, and despite the pain and sensitivity surrounding the attacks. 

"If we stop talking about it and sharing personal stories," Brennan said, "it’s just going to become another event in history."

By Brinley Hineman

brinley.hineman@newsday.com

Brinley Hineman covers the Town of Hempstead and the City of Long Beach for Newsday. She previously was a reporter in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a West Virginia native.