Teaching Beyond September 11th Project
The Teaching Beyond September 11th Project is a multimodal curriculum for high school and college educators and students about the ongoing global impact of 9/11, focusing on the years 2001-2021.
Created by a team of educators from the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with inter/national scholars, practitioners, and community activist leaders, our goal is to help educators and students move beyond the headlines to deepen their understandings of the post-9/11 global context and consider the implications on a number of communities worldwide.
Organized across six themes, the 20-module curriculum is structured to allow for maximum flexibility. Each module is grounded in a year between 2001-21 and contains 2-3 lessons within it. These modules and lessons—which are common core aligned—are designed so that educators can use one of them to explore a particular topic, even if they are not teaching the full curriculum.
The first few modules are available below. We will gradually be releasing additional content in the coming year. To learn when new content is added to this repository, please sign up here.
A Note to Educators
A number of the topics that this curriculum covers may be emotionally demanding for students. Some lessons will challenge students’ worldviews, while others might cause discomfort, especially for students from impacted communities. As educators, we believe that some of the best learning happens outside of one’s comfort zone; that being said, it is imperative for educators to approach these topics with sensitivity so as not to reinforce stereotypes or create tensions within groups of students or foster disinformation. Understanding who the students in your class are and the context of their lives will help prevent misunderstandings and better inform learning. We provide resources on how to introduce complex and emotionally challenging material to students and encourage educators/facilitators to look through these ideas before introducing these lessons.