us terrorist attacks

9/11: How do we deal with it? | Jerry Talandis Jr. | September 11th, 2001

Hi all,

I just watched the World Trade Center collapse live on TV, and I have to go to work tomorrow and teach English. Everyone is going to want to talk about it.

What is the best way for teachers to deal with big, world-shaking events like this?

I'm at a loss. I could just continue on, business as usual, but that hardly feels right. Yet on the other hand, I don't want to turn in world tragedy into "speaking opportunities." I'm also not a therapist, and I can't deal with all the emotional side of things.

What are all of you doing, or not doing about this incident? I think it will have a big impact on the world scene, so therefore this "international" aspect of it affects us and our work.

What is the responsible thing to do?

Jerry

Re: US Bombings | Francesca | September 11th, 2001

Jerry, I don't think you need to assume any responsibility to react in a certain way in your classroom to what has happened today. I'll be discussing the situation tonight with students as I have been with family and neighbours during the day. Not to make it into a speaking activity, but rather because it seems to be the natural thing to do, then I'll carry on with business as usual. If people react emotionally, that's natural too, I think that in the event of tragedies the teacher becomes a member of the group, equal to his students, rather than a leader or an expert.

Francesca

Re: 9/11: How do we deal with it? | Kathy Jaehnig | September 11th, 2001

Jerry,

I have canceled my lessons for tomorrow - all 9 hours of them. I feel it is appropriate to send my students a brief message that it is a national day of mourning. My students in Germany will most certainly understand and respect that. Discussions can take place at a later date.

Kathy Jaehnig

Re: 9/11: How do we deal with it? | Danyal Freeman | September 11th, 2001

Clearly the events in the US are being watched with horror and amazement around the world and cultural and personal reactions to this will vary. We can naturally expect these to be evidenced in the classroom also. I think each teacher should know best how to deal with this in the classroom based on your relationship with students and knowledge of their culture. Above all it is incumbent on us to remain professional and to remember that we are language teachers not therapists, Students will expect similar.

Danyal Freeman

Re: NYC | Jay Graham | September 13th, 2001

I agree with your response Jerry in dealing with this tragedy with the students. In Indonesia where I teach, Indonesians act very differently from Westerners. Most students when discussing this topic reacted with nervous giggles and some jokes but not out of disrespect but because here when something very horrible happens people do not normally cry or show strong emotion ...like if someone is angry Indonesians will "turn the other cheek" and not make a scene or get angry. I think this is the case with SE Asian countries. Anyhow a new teacher (new to Indonesia) was a bit offended by the Ss reaction and I tried to assure her that they were NOT being disrespectful. After pointing this out she understood. Its funny how some cultures react to grief and sorrow and emotions in general.

I didn't do anything special with my class we talked about it briefly but didn't delve into it much. I did want to be very careful with this subject, as my class is a mixture of Christians, Muslims and Hindus. Some classes brought it up others did not but I know everyone knew about and I also knew that behind some Ss nervous giggling was great sorrow.

Jay Graham

Re: US Bombings | Francesca | September 13th, 2001

Jerry,

Interesting to hear that your Japanese students in groups didn't feel able to talk about the recent tragic events- certainly a reflection of the culture. Here in Brazil it has been impossible to avoid the subject and roughly the first twenty minutes of all my classes have been occupied with discussion of the topic. Everyone is shocked and greatly saddened. Most are also worried about the repercussions.

I think people, Brazilians at least, need to talk about this event as it helps them deal with it. Do the Japanese reserve such conversations for their families and close friends only ? Do they not feel able to talk about it with you because you are an American, out of respect or because they are embarrassed and do not know what to say?

Francesca

Re: US Bombings | Darin Bicknell | September 13th, 2001

Like I said let them talk about it ...if they wish.

Here in Singapore I used the USA Today synopsis to illustrate Appendix 1.1.1 The Writing Variables:

1 TOPIC general subject of the writing, e.g., semestered schools, teen pregnancy, pets, AIDS, violence in sports, WWI, rules to live by, etc.

2 PURPOSE to inform, to describe, to persuade, to narrate, to entertain, eg, to persuade teens that semestered schools are better than non-semestered schools, to entertain the reader with a story about the writer's life.

3 AUDIENCE the person(s) who will be reading the piece: specifically, generally, e.g., Canadian teens, teachers, professional middle-class Canadians, people shopping for computers, etc.

4 FORMAT What type of writing is this?- autobiography biography short story poetry report novel drama letter monologue speech essay: personal persuasive literary.

5 TONE the author's attitude toward the subject: it is accomplished through diction, sentence structure, ideas, etc, eg, serious, humorous, angry, ironic, light-hearted, warm, bitter, anxious, nostalgic, happy.

6 STYLE any of the writing tools used to achieve the purpose, create the tone, appeal to an audience, etc, e.g., formal/informal diction, sentence structure, punctuation, dialogue, anecdotes, facts, suspense.

7 POINT OF VIEW first person: I/me/my, We/us/our second person: You (used only for recipes, instruction manuals) third person: He/she/it/him/her/his/hers They/them/theirs.

Using this I was able to work with the topic into a lesson and from that the students from China (1), Hong Kong (1), Malaysia (1) and Singapore (1) all were able to voice concerns about the issue with something to guide them ...remember not everyone has something to say some are scared to speak and maybe they do not want to offend you in anyway by saying the wrong thing there could be a hundred different reasons including the one that were mentioned. The event is a tragic one but I have to remain professional and teach and not work on the premise that I need to get a response from students on issues they may not be equipped to discuss. A lot of times as teachers we forget that issues like these require more depth and control to voice a persons feelings maybe they were just unable to voice what they were feeling.

Darin Bicknell

Re: US Bombings | Jerry Talandis Jr. | September 13th, 2001

Hello everyone,

Thanks for responding to my question yesterday. I appreciated everyone's advice.

I had a hard, strange day at work yesterday. Here in Japan, everything went down late at night, so I stayed up until 2am Tokyo time watching the news. I couldn't sleep much, and got up early to watch more news. I had class first period, so I wondered how I would deal with the situation. Before I drove off to school, I read some of your comments, so that got me thinking concretely about what to do. Thanks for that.

When I got there, all the teachers and office staff were crowding around the TV in the main office, watching CNN. Some of the people hadn't heard the news yet, and of course they were shocked. We talked about how we as teachers should respond. People had various responses. One teacher said he wouldn't mention it and would just carry on. Another teacher, who teaches a World Affairs class, said that she would just let her students watch the news in class. She suggested to mention the incident and give people a chance to comment. I decided that was the best approach. I wanted to at least acknowledge it, and then let the students decide where to take it.

When I began my class, I was at a loss. There was a big, heavy feeling in the air. No one really wanted to do any studying. I mentioned the attacks, and offered a space to discuss it, but I wasn't surprised that no one said anything. This is Japan! I made it "OK" to speak in Japanese, but still no one spoke. I couldn't blame them. Based on my intuition, I decided it was best just to go on about things. I did the same in my next class, that afternoon. Some students talked about it with me between classes, in the "unofficial" moments that Japanese students are more able to speak in. I was asked my opinion of the matter, and if I thought there would be a war. I tried to put a hopeful spin on things, mentioning that although a great evil was done, I was confident that the forces of good would prove greater in the end. I really believe that, and it was good to be able to say so.

In my evening private adult class, my beginning students were really keen to talk about it, although in Japanese. I didn't try to make a "learning experience" out of it. I just chatted with them in English, and they spoke in Japanese. They wanted to know about how I felt, and I told them of a report I had seen on the news showing a candle light vigil, where people from all kinds of religious and non-religious backgrounds prayed together, and were reminded that when they gave their blood, it was all the same color. This was a beautiful image, so I was happy to share that. Then I made a sudden transition to the lesson's topic, a discussion of the story "Momotaro the Dog." Everyone laughed at the sudden contrast. We all knew it was pretty meaningless in light of what had happened, but somehow it was still important to carry on.

That's about it. I don't plan on doing anything special about this unless the spirit moves me. We'll see how it goes.

How has this issue played out in your schools?

Peace,

Jerry

Re: US Bombings | Colin | September 17th, 2001

Hi all!

Like Jerry, I teach in Japan, and none of my students have raised the topic of the recent attack on the US - in or out of class.

I have a friend who lives near the world trade center, and my Japanese roommate's company has/d an office on the 10 th floor. He was transfixed and I saw a lot of the news happen live on NHK (Japanese public broadcasting) as it happened because he had all three TVs in the apartment tuned to the news.

My immediate reaction, like most I suspect, was one of shock and disbelief. Then, the teacher in me took over and I stuck a video in the machine and taped the bilingual news. I didn't intend to use it today or even next week, but students in the past have asked me about Princess Diana's funeral and the Challenger disaster and so on. Usually they do this about 2 or 3 years after the event, when you haven't got any materials or resources to do anything about it!

I am recording, selectively, news items and taking copies of the English language newspapers here. Not for now, because I don't think I can handle some of the emotions involved, but for 2 or 3 months time, when the dust has settled and maybe everyone can approach the thing more objectively.

On Thursday morning I had already scheduled a lesson about airline travel - which proceeded as planned. However, we spent most of the day in the office making jokes about airlines and wondering what Taliban airlines would be like, and speculating and making other totally 'inappropriate' comments, and talking about the different ways our respective cultures deal with shocking events.

It certainly seemed to us that a western trait was to make light of the matter, but the Asian (Japanese) way was to mention something and giggle. We realise that the giggle is out of embarrassment, in case it is something that the student thinks they shouldn't be talking about, but sometimes it's easy to take the silence and the other-cultured reaction the wrong way.

I'm glad that we feel that we can discuss this openly on the list, because I think those who contribute realize that this list is an outlet for some who may feel isolated or unable to feel part of their own cultures and heritage (I include myself in this). Whether or not those participants are writers or lurkers. It's important, and human, to feel that you're not the only one.

Rather than talk immediately, on a 'classroom' basis, with my students about this, I want to revisit the topic later and discuss the stupid questions that reporters ask in this kind of situation, and why the BBC World news showed people in refugee camps celebrating the events, and highlight how English speakers use "Oh my God!" in a REAL situation, and compare it with other shocking events witnessed live on film/video (Hindenburg, Challenger, JFK shooting...) to question the kind of methods used in reporting events like this...

I think these are probably likely to promote more discussion and active use of language, as well as being slightly more objective and less open to embarassing silences.

It's easy to get caught up in being a teacher - because it's such a fun job) - and forget that we too have feelings, reactions and so on, like everyone else. We all react in different ways and no-one's response is necessarily any better or any worse than another's. Life goes on, that's the way of things, and other cliches....

Colin

Re: US Bombings | Jerry Talandis Jr. | September 17th, 2001

Hi Colin,

Thanks for your nice response to this issue. Like you, my students never bring it up. I'm sure there are various reasons why, among them shyness, lack of confidence, or just a desire to not want to talk about it. I've dropped any ideas of using this incident as a learning opportunity, but I think that in the future it could be useful. You are doing a smart thing by taping stuff now. It may come in handy later. I will think about that seriously. This is history!- 5 or 10 years down the line, all this stuff will be in some history textbook, so wouldn't it be cool to pull out some materials from the actual time?

Regarding talking about this topic on this list, well, I think that is natural. Good luck trying to find any other type of discussion list that isn't talking about it!- We need to (I need to) talk about it or else I can't really deal with it so well. It's been interesting to see how different teachers have delt with it in different countries.

Next on tap is a war with Afghanistan (I hope not, however!). Here is a situation where education can be real useful. How do you go about teaching about something like that with EFL students?- I suppose one way is to read articles about Afghanistan to learn basic facts. It would also be helpful to explore some of the reasons why those terrorists did what they did. Anyway, any ideas?

Cheers,

Jerry

Re: US Bombings | James Hobbs | September 17th, 2001

Hi everyone,

I'm also teaching in Japan, but unlike Colin's and Jerry's students, my (mostly adult) students have talked about little else but the bombings for the last week. Much like the US TV news, my classes have moved on from shock, to anger, to heated debates about what to do next. I've had a number of classes where we simply abandoned the planned lesson as there were just so many opinions students wanted to voice, and I've even found myself playing referee between the 'doves' and 'hawks' in some classes. I also operate an English email discussion list for my private students (seeing this list gave me the idea) and the bombings have been the only topic of discussion for the last week. As for students who avoid the topic, I suspect that the reasons are more linguistic than cultural, in the sense that perhaps lower level groups don't talk about it for the simple reason that they can't. Let's face it, you need a very impressive vocabulary to talk about the issue in any depth. I was barely five minutes into class yesterday before the board was full of words like "fundamentalist", "Palestinian", and "retaliation".

One language point that came up in class was the way news stories tend to be given semi-official titles in Japanese. Listen to ABC or CNN and the newsreader may introduce the story by referring to "The World Trade Center/Pentagon bombing", "The US terrorist attacks", "The US bombings" - basically there are no rules. But watch any Japanese program and you are certain to hear it referred to as "DOUJI-TAHATSU-TERO-JIKEN" (literally: "simultaneous massive terror incidents"), and you will usually hear this repeated four or five time over the course of a two or three minute report. In Japan this is THE name for the attacks. I wonder if this could be a reflection of the lack of a definite article in Japanese, ie "THE terrorist attack" would be "TERO-JIKEN", but this could equally mean "A terrorist attack", "terrorist attackS" or "THE terrorist attackS", so perhaps they need to agree on a more specific title to avoid confusion.

James Hobbs

Re: US Bombings | Jerry Talandis Jr. | September 18th, 2001

Hi James,

Thanks for your response to this discussion. I think your experience shows the point that not all Japanese people fit the stereotype - some are quite vocal about issues such as this. It's good to know that some nihonjins are getting into discussions about it.

Jerry

 

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