OCENASIDE, Calif. (KGTV) – For many, it’s hard to forget where they were on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
“I was actually in a high school classroom myself, and I remember, if I'm gonna go back, the teacher rolling in a TV cart and saying, 'Something's happening in New York City,” Jesse Kauric, an Oceanside High School social studies teacher, said.
“I watched live in a classroom the second tower being hit and the school going on lockdown, unbeknownst to me, that another plane is going to be going down right outside of Pittsburgh, you know, not too far away from where our high school was.”
Four planes, three cities, thousands of lives lost, and a country changed forever.
“I started doing the lesson, right when I started teaching, even when I was substitute teaching. If I was substitute teaching on 9/11. I was doing a lesson plan.”
Since 2016, Kauric has been doing a specific lesson about 9/11 for his students.
“When I first started teaching, the students were, you know, babies or toddlers during 9/11. And now, since really 2020, we have no students that were alive in 9/11,” Kauric said. “I think it is incredibly important for the students to know what their parents and their grandparents and their aunts and uncles and so forth what they carry with them. This is a scar that we have.”
The lesson is students fill out worksheets on what they know and didn't know about 9/11, seeing video clips, seeing a flag flown from Camp Pendleton, the cultural impact of 9/11, and front pages of newspapers the next day of what happened 25 years ago.
“Learning about it in deeper detail today, learning about the boat lift, learning about how people stepped in and how involved the American people were,” Darone Redd, an Oceanside HS Senior, said.
"It really moved my heart this year to want to appreciate 9/11 more, and you know, never forget, as they say.”
90 minutes to reflect on how a nation was changed at a time when these students weren’t even alive.
“I think it's just best to once again never forget, to be able to not be desensitized to it as a lot of people are since it happened,” Adelyn Aguon, Oceanside HS Senior.
As the lesson ends with the ringing of the bell and a final moment of silence, there’s a message Kauric hopes to get across to his students.
“We promise to never forget, and part of never forgetting is telling the story,” Kauric said.
