GILBERT, AZ — Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, students at Gilbert Accelerated Middle School are learning about the day through the memories of people who experienced it.
The students, who were born years after the attacks, interviewed family members and others who remember Sept. 11, 2001. They then brought those stories back to the classroom and created posters highlighting the personal experiences they heard.
For student Willo Shepard-Beran, hearing the emotion behind those stories helped make history more understandable.
“History means a lot to me, and just knowing the stories from emotions, not just from facts and textbook, help people understand it better than just listing facts like you do in math, you know,” Shepard-Beran said.
The projects also gave students a chance to learn from one another as they read the stories collected by their classmates.
Sofia Niebla said the experience changed how she understood the attacks.
“I think it helped me learn a lot about 9/11 and also hearing about, like, my classmates’ experiences,” Niebla said. “It definitely helped open my eyes a bit more to what the event of 9/11 really was.”
Teacher Jennifer Welcome said the personal stories give students something they would not necessarily find in traditional classroom materials.
“These are very personal objects up around the room now that you would never be able to get necessarily, like, out of a textbook,” Welcome said.
For Jenna Schaff, the assignment meant talking with her mother about what she remembered.
Schaff said her mother did not really know what the World Trade Center was before the attacks and was shocked when she first learned what had happened.
The assignment allowed students to see Sept. 11 not only through historical facts, but through the experiences and emotions of people they know.
Twenty-five years later, a generation that was not alive on Sept. 11, 2001, is learning about that day directly from the people who were, helping keep those personal stories alive.
