As news of the death of Osama bin Laden dominated media reports today and yesterday, several media outlets have run reports focusing on how this story should be handled in the classroom. The Washington Post (5/3, Johnson) profiles Sheryl Robinson, a sixth-grade teacher at Washington, DC's, MV Leckie Elementary, who "tried to explain to her sixth grade class why this was not just another Monday -- why the death of Osama bin Laden was historic. That meant, first, a lesson on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although her students were toddlers at the time, Robinson explained that the day had a deep impact on their school in Southwest Washington, M.V. Leckie Elementary," because "in 2001, Leckie sixth-graders looked out their classroom window and saw billowing smoke coming from the direction of the Pentagon" and later "learned that one of their classmates and a teacher were on American Airlines Flight 77 -- the plane that hit the Pentagon."
The Chicago Tribune (5/3, Ahmed-Ullah, Dizikes, Malone) runs a report on how parents and teachers are struggling "with a weighty question: how to explain to children when, or if, it is acceptable to kill another human being. Many stepped lightly on the difficult subject, allowing children to ask questions and stating their own mixed feelings about bin Laden's dramatic death. Others tried to connect the CIA-led takedown in purely historic terms - an event directly linked to the 9/11 attacks that bin Laden orchestrated at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Still others avoided it altogether."
WSPA-TV Asheville, NC (5/3, Dill), WTOV-TV Steubenville, OH (5/3), the Huffington Post (5/3, Turner), and Maureen Downey writing at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (5/3) "Get Schooled" blog are among other media outlets exploring how to address this story in the classroom.
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