Pearl Harbor Day 2011-70 years later

Wednesday marked the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day-the day that President Franklin Roosevelt called "a day that will live in infamy." I was born in 1956 so what I know about that fateful day is through secondary sources. I believe my teachers in elementary, junior high, and high school impressed upon me that this was a very historical day-one that literally changed millions of lives. I was always interested in history. Now it is my job as an educator to carry on that tradition. I was impressed, as I often am, at how much knowledge my 6th grade students have of historical events. Several of them knew facts about our navy and weapons that I had never heard of. Some of this was gained no doubt from The History Channel or The Military Channel, but I would like to think some information was gained from conversations with parents and grandparents. Who would have thought we would ever be attacked on our own soil again? One of the things I did on September 11th 2001,like millions of other Americans, was to go online and look at updates. When I read more lives were lost than at Pearl Harbor I suddenly realized the catastrophic nature of that day. It all sunk in. This is a story I often repeat to my students. I used Wednesday as a lesson for our current 9/11 mural project with artist Augusto Bordelois. We are working with elements that lend themselves to big ideas not detail. A firefighter rushing into a burning building just won't make it, but a large American flag would. So what are the big images we have of Pearl Harbor? Is it of brave men drowning? I thought of this whenever folks mention the people who leaped to their death from the Twin Towers. I don't think that's the image we want to remember. On Wednesday our students made sketches of what they feel should be included in the mural. Working in groups of 4-6, students learned an important life lesson-compromise. Sometimes their ideas did not make the final cut. This may have been the most important lesson in his time with the students. That evening I found by accident, that AMC was showing From Here to Eternity.