A teacher's special role - Letters

My wife is a third-grade teacher, and I can attest to the special role of teachers on September 11. She called each of her kids' homes that evening and spoke with a parent to make sure all was well.

Unfortunately, in today's society, there is no respite from the Columbines and the Talibans. Teachers need to have a set of coping/counseling strategies in their drawer next to the chalk and marker pens. Kids take cues from teachers on how to respond to the tragic and unexplainable. I grew up in the 1950s and the "duck-and-cover" drills, but my teachers never adequately explained what we were covering ourselves from. After a decent interval, the attacks become history, and history can't be denied, though use of the footage [of the World Trade Center attacks] should be judicious. One doesn't show pictures of the piles of bodies at the Nazi prison camps to kids at impressionable ages.

FRANK J. BATAVICK
Vice President, Acquisitions
Films for the Humanities and Sciences

Mr. Batavick is a member of the TECHNOS Editorial Advisory Board.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Agency for Instructional Technology
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group