Education Notebook

Swipe: Teaching 9/11 to those too young to remember, with Washington Post article link

Eight years ago, terrorist-hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon, killing thousands, leaving a trail of suffering still felt by many today.

In Minnesota, obviously, many were lucky. I remember going into the shower in my college dorm, hearing the news that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. The rest of the day was spent watching the TV, spanning the Internet for updates and hearing from loved ones. We were scared, but again, we were thousands of miles away.

(A friend was studying at NYU at the time. Can't even begin to think what that was like. Another person I used to work with a few years back was from Brooklyn. He told me a story about his aunt, who worked in one of the WTC buildings. For whatever reason, she slept in a bit and called in sick. Imagine what her life must be like knowing that a simple decision like that kept her alive.)

It was a defining moment for this generation, on par with the assassinations of JFK or MLK.

Now, schools face the inevitability of teaching young students about Sept. 11

This brilliant article from the Washington Post examines how one school is doing that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091004425.html?hpid%3Dartslot&sub=AR

Programming Note No. 1 - Welcome

Welcome to the Education lounge, the Post-Bulletin's education blog.

We envision this as a place for smaller education stories, extended analysis, short blurbs about local achievers, basically as a place to fit all the news that isn't fit to print for whatever reason. But I'll post my articles here, too. I'll also post interesting education stories from around the state and country. Ideally, we want this to be a place for interesting, amusing and thought-provoking items and discussions, particularly on local issues involving area public and private schools, as well as our colleges and universities in town.

At this point, we have dubbed it the extremely exciting "Education Notebook." We went through a bevy of different names, but all came off cheesy and ridiculous. (Most reminded me of an after school special: "Back of the Class," "School Crossing," "The Backpack. Others were puns off of my last name and anyone familiar with the Post-Bulletin knows that puns are strict Kiger territory. Especially when related to a blog.)

But through all of the different titles, there are two names I kind of favor: Book Smart and Spilled Ink.

I like Book Smart only because then we can use the abbreviation "BS." (That pretty accurately describes what many call "my writing style." Also, "Elliot is a hack" was too long for our server.) "Spilled Ink" sounds kind of cool, and I like the allusion to material that didn't fit in our regular pages, but it really doesn't scream education at all. Ideally, people should be able to tell this is about education by the name itself.

So at this point, we'll keep Education Notebook as the defacto title, although it may eventually meld into something else. We aren't bound by brick and mortar here -- if you have a suggestion, send it over. Think of it as a contest like Alan DeKeyrel's #winwednesday on Twitter (but there won't be any money exchanged).

Also, if you have a suggestion or question, send those, too. We'll try to keep things above the belt here. We can debate ideas without resulting to ALL CAPS, curse words or libelous claims.

Here's our address, so -- shameless plug alert -- add it to your bookmarks and rss feeds:

http://postbulletin.typepad.com/education_notebook/

Thank you. Please keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times and please remember to tip your wait staff.

-Elliot
emann[at]postbulletin.com

Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/elliotmann

(Hat tip to collegue A. Wallmeyer on the tagline.)