22 years later, teachers reflect on how 9/11 is remembered in the classroom

More than two decades after Sept. 11, 2001, educators who watched the terror attacks unfold live on TV see slow changes in how the tragic day is honored in classrooms. 

Teachers are forced to walk a fine line, facing the emotions from a day that no one in their generation will forget while educating kids who see the deadliest foreign attack on U.S. soil as a distant historical event.

“It was actually my first year teaching, and we had only been in school a couple of weeks when it happened, so I was very brand new still,” said Shannon Seneczko, who was teaching fifth grade in a suburb of Chicago. “And so that kind of really hits me. That was one of my very first teaching experiences, dealing with my own emotions that day and then being there for the kids too.”

Seneczko recalled the nervousness of students who had parents in the city on the day of the attack, as no one knew where could be targeted next.