For 25 years, students in the East Rockaway School District have learned about Sept. 11, 2001, through more than just textbooks.
They have drawn memorials, written poems and built elaborate models. They have even visited ground zero, spoken with veterans and first responders and found ways to help communities recover from tragedy.
And for nearly all of that time, social studies teacher Don Poland has saved their work.
Now, as Poland, 64, enters his final year of teaching at East Rockaway Junior-Senior High School after 28 years in the district, decades of those projects have come together in a 25-year 9/11 remembrance exhibit at East Rockaway Village Hall — a collection that tells as much about generations of East Rockaway students as it does about the teacher who taught them.
“It’s about the kids, and how hard they worked,” Poland said. “It’s amazing, the work they did.”
Poland began teaching at East Rockaway Junior-Senior High School in 1998. His wife, Cheryl, an East Rockaway alumna who also teaches science at the school, began working there a year earlier, and their children later attended East Rockaway schools.
“This is the best town in the world,” Poland said.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Poland and his students watched on television as the attacks unfolded. In the days that followed, his eighth graders came to class with questions, trying to understand what they had witnessed.
“As the days passed, we tried to make sense of the senseless,” Poland recalled.
Those questions became lessons. Students began making collages by hand, cutting and pasting photographs and information — before such projects were commonly created on computers. As the aftermath of the attacks unfolded, including the anthrax attacks and the war in Afghanistan, Poland incorporated current events into his lessons, helping students understand what was happening and why.
Over the years, students created poems, memorial stamps, maps, timelines and other projects examining the attacks and their aftermath. Poland kept much of their work, eventually accumulating a collection spanning generations of East Rockaway eighth graders.
Some of those students returned to see it.
One former student recently contacted Poland and sent him a video that her father had taken of the 9/11 project she created years ago. She later donated the project for this year’s exhibit. Poland said former students returned to visit the exhibit, some accompanied by their parents and children.
“We pass the torch from generation to generation,” he said. “We want to never forget.”
But that mission has changed as the years have passed.
The students who sat in Poland’s classroom in 2001 experienced Sept. 11 as it happened. Today’s eighth graders were born years after the attacks. For Poland, that has made it increasingly important to find ways for students to connect personally with the history.
“If you can get a little empathy involved, it makes them remember,” he said.
Each year, Poland said, his students spend weeks studying Sept. 11, reading and analyzing material, learning vocabulary, creating timelines and maps and writing journal entries. Students also take part in remembrance activities with local veterans and community organizations.
Poland has returned to ground zero every year since the attacks.
“It’s the most important thing I can do as a teacher and American citizen,” he said.
The Village Hall exhibit was on display from Sept. 6 through Sept. 20, bringing together the work Poland has preserved over the years, along with photographs, memorabilia and other materials connected to Sept. 11. A remembrance program held there Sept. 8 also gave survivors, first responders, family and community members an opportunity to tell their own stories.
Poland said some spoke publicly about their experiences for the first time.
“You remember that day even though you weren’t there, and that’s still important,” he said. “It’s a shared event that we have that binds us together, the good and the bad.”
Bill Corbett, Poland’s neighbor and longtime friend, also has seen Poland’s influence on East Rockaway students firsthand. Poland taught Corbett’s children, who considered him their favorite teacher.
“I have seen firsthand the impact he has had on young people and his commitment to ensuring that new generations understand what happened on September 11, 2001, and never forget why remembering this day remains so important,” Corbett said.
Now, in his final year in the East Rockaway classroom, Poland is asking his students to continue something he has spent a quarter-century trying to preserve.
“I won’t be here in 25 years, and hopefully they will. I’m passing the torch on to you,” he told them. “Promise me you’ll do your job of passing it on.”
His students, he said, promised him they would.
