The U.S. flag at Harper Park Middle School in Leesburg was flying at half-staff yesterday as sixth-grade social studies teacher Jeanette Zellner prepared to begin class as she does most days -- with a discussion of world events.
On this first day back from winter vacation, that meant leading a classroom of 11- and 12-year-olds through a lesson on one of the world's worst natural disasters.
Most students had seen the dramatic television footage of waves wiping out entire villages and of the devastation from Indonesia to Somalia. They had watched the death toll from the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami spiral by the tens of thousands, now reaching nearly 140,000.
"They kept trying to interview this woman who was holding her dead baby," Kyle Adams, 11, said. "Also, there was this baby that landed in a tree, and it lived there for four days."
Still, many children have yet to make sense of the disaster. One of Zellner's students said that the children of the region must be sad, but they also should be happy -- after all, school was canceled.
At schools across the Washington area yesterday, educators searched for the teachable moments in a tragedy that occurred thousands of miles away and can seem far removed from students' daily lives.
"I think it's the school's responsibility to help young people understand what they can do and not just say, 'That happened over there,' " Harper Park Principal Claudia Bolen-Sullivan said. "It didn't just happen over there. This is a global society."
Beyond the normal curriculum
At Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, social studies teachers will meet tomorrow to plan a class focused on the disaster, acting Principal Christopher Garran said. Ideas range from a lesson in the geography of South Asia to drawing up an emergency resolution in the school's model United Nations to a look at politics surrounding U.S. relief efforts.
"They want to build it so that it's not just presenting information but getting kids to talk about this situation," Garran said. He also said that the tragedy gives teachers a unique opportunity to discuss issues outside of the normal curriculum: the infrastructure of public health in the Third World, global social inequities and even the meaning of life and death.
"We have a sort of sanitized version of world affairs," he said. "We can turn on and turn off CNN."
Students share stories
But for some students, the disaster is all too personal. Three Walter Johnson students -- two from Sri Lanka and one from Thailand -- have family members who were affected by the tsunami. Garran said counselors were at the school yesterday in case students needed to talk to someone.
At JEB Stuart High School in the Falls Church area of Fairfax County, teacher Anita Ensmann told her students -- all of whom recently immigrated to the United States -- that the earthquake caused waves taller than the classroom to crash into the shore. She wrote on a white board the names of countries ravaged by the tsunami: Thailand, Indonesia, India.
Adan Daud, 17, who sat near the back of the classroom, spoke up: "My country was affected," he said. "Somalia."
Daud said his family members there live far inland and were not in danger. He had worried for the safety of three close friends from his old home when he heard about the tsunami while watching CNN. He soon learned through e-mail that his friends were safe, but mourning.
"They told me that some of their friends are dead," Daud said. "I tell them that the tsunami is caused by the gods, so there's nothing they can do but pray for them."
Abhishek Sinha, 18, a sophomore at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, said his relatives in India survived the flooding but lost their homes and belongings. His uncle lives near the country's southern tip, he said, and is determined to rebuild his life there.
"You can't even see there was a house there before," he told his classmates yesterday afternoon. "There's just garbage."
Teacher Joseph Bellino asked the students to think about what they would do if their homes were destroyed. What would they eat? What would they drink? That is the reality the tsunami survivors are facing, he said.
"The next question is: What do you want to do about it?" Bellino asked them.
The answer from his class is an effort to raise money for one of his former students who is now a dentist and headed to Thailand to aid relief efforts. At Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville, students and teachers have set up a relief fund.
And the student leadership class at Walter Johnson is making a paper chain that will be hung in the school hallways to keep track of donations.
"I'm so impressed with the students," Garran said. "At least they see that as one thing they can try to do to help."
Washington Post Staff writer Maria Glod contributed to this report.
