Schools address cataclysmic event in different ways

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BANGOR – Planes crashed, people died and people made wrong choices.

That’s what the pupils in June Burtt’s second-grade class came away with Wednesday, according to the Glenburn Elementary School teacher.

“I think that’s really all they can handle,” she said.

In the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., area schools were left grappling with the thorny issue of just how much children should be told about the tragedy.

The plan at a number of area elementary schools was to stay low-key and let children talk about the event only if they wanted to, officials said.

At middle schools and high schools, teachers capitalized on the opportunity to incorporate the shattering events into their curricula.

Glenburn Elementary School Principal Carolyn Leick had her own philosophy.

“You can’t push it under the carpet,” she said Wednesday. “That causes a lot of harm. When you do that kids feel unsafe about expressing their honest feelings and things blow up in their minds.”

After a brainstorming session Glenburn teachers settled on a number of ways to initiate a discussion of the calamity and help children deal with their feelings.

Some decided to have pupils paint a mural depicting their reactions to the event. Others asked children to make a list of ways adults can help victims and another list of ways they themselves can help, Leick said.

While the school’s librarian amassed reading material on related topics like death and dying or another tragedy like Pearl Harbor, the music teacher had children sing encouraging songs like “We Shall Overcome.”

One group of students decided on its own to make cards for the victims that would be distributed at hospitals, according to the principal.

Meanwhile, Burtt told her pupils how proud she was that “our country now is thinking about what it needs to do next.

“Right now we’re looking for clues,” she said. “You can’t just go blame someone.”

Larry Puls, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade social studies in Glenburn, entered into a frank discussion about terrorists.

“They want you to be afraid down into the core of your soul,” he told his students.

“Lots of kids were confused, [asking] why did it happen? How can people just disregard lives? I had no answer,” he said on the phone after classes let out.

But Puls was able to make some things clear. Not everyone who follows the Islamic religion is bad. “Their basic tenet is to respect everyone for who they are,” he told the children. And it was, after all, a Christian who blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he reminded them.

The children also wanted to know if the price of gasoline would rise and whether mail would be delivered, Puls recalled.

“A couple of kids said they appreciated my frankness,” said Puls, who told them to call or e-mail him with other questions.

At Capri Street School in Brewer, Principal Cathy Lewis told teachers to answer questions honestly but not to initiate a conversation.

“Parents wanted to be the ones who talked to their kids,” she said, noting that the guidance counselor sent parents information on how to approach the issue.

“We assume and hope that people know their kids well enough to know what they need to know,” Lewis said.

And at Asa Adams School in Orono, Principal Sue O’Roak said the goal was “to maintain as much normalcy as possible but answer questions as honestly as we could without being inflammatory or injecting our own personal feelings.”

Officials sent a note home suggesting that parents limit the amount of time their children watched the television coverage.

Youngsters could become “anxious and fearful” even though the tragedy didn’t touch their lives directly, she said.

Eddington Elementary School used the tragedy to embark upon a civics lesson.

At the school’s weekly assembly, Principal Joan Staffiere said she “read a book about the flag and talked about our freedoms and how wonderful it is to live in America.”

Hermon Middle School teacher David Yeo told his sixth-grade social studies class that Maine is no longer as vulnerable as it would have been if Loring Air Force Base still existed.

“We would have been one of the first spots to be hit,” he said.

Across the board, although guidance counselors and social workers were put on alert, pupils didn’t appear to need any extra attention.

“We were professionally prepared to handle any emotional instances, but in all honesty … there really wasn’t that kind of reaction,” Bangor Superintendent of Schools Sandy Ervin said.

Staff urged students during the morning’s loudspeaker announcements to “stand together and be tolerant,” he said.

“We have a multicultural population and we wanted to make sure there was no intolerance of those students.”