Schools

Snapshot: Lace Elementary School Pays Tribute to 9/11

District 61 teaches students respect for those who serve the U.S.

Only the very oldest students at this year — the fifth-graders and a handful of fourth-graders — had been born on Sept. 11, 2001.

But the students paid tribute Friday to the lives that were lost and the lives that were forever changed that day by each placing an American flag, nearly 600 in all, by the school sign on Cass Avenue.

“With kids this age, you want to honor the day, but you want to make it age appropriate,” Lace Principal Marty Casey said. “This way, they get to do something meaningful. It frames it in the correct terms so they can go home and have a conversation with their families.”

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Teaching respect for those who serve the U.S. — in the military and as firefighters and police officers — has been a priority for all the schools during the past 10 years.

Shortly after the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11, Casey said organized a breakfast for rescuers during which the band played and the chorus sang as the school honored area police and firefighters.

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“At that time, it was so fresh in peoples’ minds, and this gave kids in junior high a chance to reflect,” said Casey, then principal at EJH.

At the same time, the district worked to ensure the students feel safe at school.

“We want to keep them kids and not have their innocence shattered,” said former teacher Dean Rodkin, who was at EJH in 2001. 

Each year since, students on the annual EJH trip to Washington, D.C., stop in Shanksville on the way and visit the field where United 93 crashed. They also tour the Pentagon.

Students at Lace earlier this year sent to military personnel serving in Afghanistan. The district also organizes an annual assembly, which last year featured a Skype conversation with , who at the time was serving in Afghanistan.

“In 2001, it really came to light the danger [first-responders and servicemen] put themselves in each and every day,” Casey said. “Over the years, we have to rekindle that spirit.”


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