SPRINGDALE (KFSM) - Many junior high students weren't born when 9/11 happened, so some teachers in Springdale used creative ways to teach them about the tragedy.
Eighth and ninth grade students at Lakeside Junior High participated in an interactive presentation about 9/11. Theater teacher Van Stewman said it is important for those people who didn't experience the attack via TV or reports to understand its impact.
"We have an opportunity to try to help them feel what we felt when we went through it, and to understand why it's such a big deal to use and the older generation, why we think it's so important for them to remember it and carry on the memory of it," Stewman said.
History teacher Michael Scott said every year since the terrorist attack, several faculty members get together to teach students about that day.
"It's a piece of our recent history, it's affected the United States and the world, which has an impact on them even though they may not know it," Scott said.
Over 600 eighth and ninth grade students listened to Lakeview's theater class portray victims and survivors from 9/11. Stewman said this is the first year his class has been involved in the presentation.
"We wanted to see what it was like to be a real person going to work that day, just a regular day like any other, and then all of a sudden this happens," Stewman said.
He said his theater students researched and found all of the personal stories that his class shared with the other students. He said many of the students found diaries and notes that overlapped each other. His ninth grade daughter, Cassidy, narrated one of the accounts.
"I know how to react to it, but I don't know really how to react to it in the way that they did, so it was kind of difficult," Cassidy said.
Her father said she was only one year old when 9/11 happened, and Cassidy said reading diaries and notes of people involved in the attacks helped her understand the significance of the day.
"You don't really get to see like the emotion and all the real feelings about it in like a textbook," Cassidy said.
History teacher Winfield Watson began the seminar to teach students about 9/11 twelve years ago at Central Junior High, and then brought the tradition with him when he began teaching at Lakeside Junior High.
