9/11 education push marks 25 years since attacks

Educators, volunteers and charities in the United States are working to teach students about the September 11 attacks, 25 years after the 2001 events and as more teachers and students have no personal memory of them.

The attacks killed 2,977 people, including passengers and crew on four hijacked planes, victims at New York's Twin Towers, firefighters and personnel at the Pentagon. There is no standardized national teaching of 9/11 in the United States, and only a handful of states require it.

At Wantagh High School on Long Island, teachers organized visits to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. The community was home to a dozen victims of the attacks, and the school's principal, Paul Guzzone, said visiting the site gave students an experience that classroom lessons and online videos could not match.

The Gary Sinise Foundation helped cover costs for the Wantagh trips and now offers teacher development programs with the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. It also runs trips with other schools to the Pentagon and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.

Other efforts include digital teaching resources for younger children. Teacher Rupa Mehta created "OOPA's World of Words," a video series made with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation that explains words such as "anniversary," "emergency," "hero," "memory" and "service" to children as young as five.