Area Schools Follow Age-Appropriate Reaction to bin Laden's Death

Many schools in north central Connecticut took a somewhat decentralized approach to Sunday’s late-breaking news that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

Most did not hold special assemblies or large gatherings but students and teachers discussed the event as appropriate on the smaller classroom level. The demands of existing plans late in the school year and the unique issue of addressing a human being's death, even one as reviled as 9/11 mastermind bin Laden, contributed to the smaller-scale approach.

"We are talking about the news with our classes, but I'm not sure if anyone is taking extensive time with the news,” said Somers High School social studies team leader Andrew Drummey. “Simply too much to do at this time of year in regards to meeting curriculum demands.”

Drummey said he showed President Obama’s Sunday speech to his U.S. history students and talked about the implications of bin Laden’s death.

Somers Elementary School Principal Ralph Riola said the school’s population is too young for a presentation on the issue and did not plan any special events.

At Tolland's Birch Grove Primary School, Principal Thomas Swanson said if students had any questions their teachers would address them. Swanson was not aware of any as of Monday afternoon, although he said there’s a possibility that some will have questions later in the week as time passes and there’s more of an opportunity for students to overhear a discussion about bin Laden’s death.

Vernon Superintendent of Schools Mary Conway said there have been no directives from her office on how to handle discussions of bin Laden.

“The school can just discuss it in terms of the current events discussions in class,” she said on Monday morning.

Conway said she was not sure the entire context of bin Laden's death applied to some of the school system's younger students. She said there was a trick, however, to covering it academically.

''I can be brought up and discussed as a current event in our social studies classes, within the context of a historical event,'' she said.

East Windsor High School Principal Liam O'Reilly said students and faculty members discussed bin Laden's killing on the classroom level.

“We’re definitely addressing it as a pretty significant event that has happened,” O’Reilly said. “We’re allowing free discussions in the classroom, to the best of our ability. We’re watching the same media outlets as everyone else.”

O'Reilly said they weren't looking at the news as a celebratory event but because bin Laden was an identified target in the war on terror.

"There seems to be a greater number of students who are aware of what's happening than on a normal Monday," O'Reilly said. "So clearly it was being discussed at home."

He said the school had coincidentally scheduled National Guard representatives to visit the school and talk with students about opportunities in the guard. While he didn't notice more students than normal visiting the representatives, he said it was interesting to have them in the school.

Suffield’s public schools took a similar approach. Superintendent of Schools Mary Greenlaw-Dixon said discussions about bin Laden’s death were held at Suffield High School.

“They did take the time to discuss it,” she said.

The town’s youngest students, at Spaulding Elementary School, didn’t delve into the issue. In each instance specifics were at the discretion of teachers and each school’s administration.

“We acted age appropriately,” Greenlaw-Dixon said.

Greenlaw-Dixon said the event was on everyone’s mind and it was good to see justice served after 10 years of uncertainty about bin Laden’s status and location.

“It’s kind of a good lesson for our kids to see,” she said.

Russell Sills, principal of Windsor High School, said the topic of bin Laden's death was dealt with informally. The news was talked about in each class, including a human rights class in which the instructor played a video of President Obama's Sunday night speech to the nation.

Students spoke about the possible political ramifications of bin Laden's demise, but much of the information provided to the students served as a gap filler for a group who were very young in 2001, Sills said.

In Mansfield, school officials said nothing special was organized in that town’s three elementary schools or middle school.

Patch Local Editors Chris Dehnel, Julian McKinley, Elyssa Millspaugh, Erin Quinlan and Larry Smith and Associate Regional Editor Megan Bard contributed to this story.