Lynnville-Sully teacher headed to NYC for national honor

Over the past five years, Kevin Johnson has spent an awful lot of time talking about an event in New York City.

This week, he’s finally set to go there.

Johnson, along his wife, Sara, are scheduled to travel to New York this week so he can receive one of the nine 9/11 Tribute Center Teaching Awards. The certificate of merit he’ll receive acknowledges his hard work over the past five years on leadership units the language arts teacher has conducted with Lynnville-Sully students regarding the events of 9/11.

The award also entails a $500 grant to Lynnville-Sully Schools to further programs that teach about the significance of 9/11.

“It’s a little different, going to the site of tragedy to get an award,” Johnson said. “But it’s really about the kids, and teaching them about the impact of events. There are a lot of personal stories involved that won’t usually be in textbooks.”

The 9/11 Tribute Center is a visitors center opened in 2006 by the September 11th Families Association, a nonprofit corporation that helps connect family members of lost loved ones, survivors, first responders and people who live and work in lower Manhattan. It has walking tours, exhibits and programs linking visitors who want to understand and appreciate the historic events with those who experienced them.

For the past five years, Johnson has helped link Lynnville-Sully eighth-graders to not only the 2,973 people killed in the attacks, but also the unprecedented rescue and recovery operations, survivors and the spirit of support, patriotism and generosity that arose nationwide in late 2001 and in 2002.

Some of the elements of Johnson’s leadership unit have involved preparing his students to interview key figures from the 9/11 attacks. One of those figures is Allison Crowther, the mother of former Boston College lacrosse player and World Trade Center equities trader Welles Crowther, whose selfless actions saved the lives of at least six people before he died in a tower collapse.

Johnson’s students interviewed Allison Crowther via Skype, and did the same with Drew Gallagher, the ESPN producer who worked on “The Man With the Red Bandanna” about Welles Crowther’s heroic actions. Johnson said there is talk Allison Crowther could come to Iowa at some point to meet with students from Lynnville-Sully and other schools.

Lynnville-Sully students have also Skyped with students from the upper east coast, where 9/11 is much more localized part of history (seven of this year’s nine honored teachers are from schools in either New York or New Jersey). Johnson said that type of open dialogue was invaluable.

“Not only do they see 9/11 in a different way, but they wanted to know about Iowa as well, like how a caucus works,” Johnson said.

He said there have been other group projects related to Sept. 11. The unit also covers local connections to 9/11 and global security events such as Musco Lighting, of Oskaloosa, helped illuminate the World Trade Center after the attacks.

Johnson said one element of the unit is to show students how small the world has become; he mentions 1968 Lynnville-Sully alum and Craig Weideman, who had a career in the  U.S. Navy, as an example.

Johnson said younger students have been involved in some elements of the project, but it’s the eighth-graders who can really comprehend more of the serious lessons. He said teachers and most other adults didn’t put much thought of educating middle schoolers and high schoolers about Sept. 11 until a few years ago.

While there are plenty of legal, moral, political and social implications of Sept. 11, Johnson focused mainly on the in-the-moment response to victims of the attacks.

“These kids were either in diapers or weren’t born when all this happened,” he said. “It’s our responsibility, as educators, to make sure they know how people rose to the task when it came to responding with only a few seconds to make decisions.”

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com