It was very interesting spending September 11th with the students this year. For those of us who remember the terror of that day and just how much things have changed since then, it's hard to imagine not taking 9/11 seriously. I was just beginning 11th grade when the attacks happened, so I wanted to share my story with my students.
In my level V/VI class, all but 2 students are seniors. That means that they (the seniors) were born in 1994 or 1995, which puts them in 1st grade on September 11, 2001. For my level I classes, nearly everyone is a freshman, which means they were born in 1997 or 1998. For the freshmen, only very few had any actual memory of that day, since they were all around 3 or 4 years old.
I wanted to take advantage of the fact that some of my students actually still remember 9/11, so I had my seniors do their first journal entry answering the question, "What do I remember from 9/11?" This was a great opportunity to practice their Spanish in a personal way, and to also work on their preterit and imperfect tense usage. :)
For the freshmen in level 1, I shared (in Spanish) with them my experience, using as many gestures and pictures as possible. Many students were really engaged, not only because of what I was saying, but by the fact that I was saying it in Spanish. Other students shared that they felt like they keep hearing this broken record of how big 9/11 was, but in some ways it's meaningless to them since they don't really remember life before that day.
It's really interesting how 1 decade makes such a difference.
My hours:
Day Date Start End Hours
Sun 9/9/2012 1:15 PM 4:00 PM 2.75
M 9/10/2012 7:45 AM 6:15 PM 10.5
7:45 PM 9:15 PM 2
T 9/11/2012 7:30 AM 5:30 PM 10
W 9/12/2012 7:30 AM 5:15 PM 9.75
Th 9/13/2012 7:15 AM 6:00 PM 10.75
9:15 PM 11:00 PM 1.75
F 9/14/2012 7:45 AM 5:00 PM 9.25
Sat 9/15/2012 8:30 AM 9:00 AM .5
Total: 57.25
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