(AP) Nagla Bedir didn’t discuss Sept. 11 with her New Jersey high school students last year. Mid-pandemic, with remote learning, it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have via computer screen. But this year, returning to the classroom just after the end of America’s longest war, she figures she can’t not teach about it.
So later this month — after students in her international diplomacy class have introduced themselves and agreed on how they’ll have respectful conversations — she plans to ask two questions: What do you know about 9/11, why it happened, and the aftermath? And how is it connected to Afghanistan?
She isn’t sure what they’ll say, but she’s set on having the discussion.
“I think it’s really important that teachers don’t shy away from teaching about these things,” says Bedir, co-founder of the organization Teaching While Muslim.
