Bremen High School teacher finds new way to teach students about 9/11

BREMEN, Ind. -- Teachers are finding new ways to educate high school students about 9/11, and Josh Simpson is one of them. 

As a Social Studies teacher at Bremen High School, Simpson feels he has a duty to help students understand the gravity of the event that unfolded. Simpson opts to teach about the subject material in an immersive way, one that places each student on the morning of Sept. 9, 2001. 

He plays a live broadcast from the day, and the class watches the broadcast unfold minutes before the first tower was struck. They then see the newscast shift and report on the breaking news that's happening. 

"It helps students empathize with the moments as they happen," Breman says. "And then it can grab their heart and mind [because] it's more likely to become real and meaningful in a classroom discussion and hopefully [spark] a discussion at home."  

Every couple of minutes, Simpson pauses the broadcast, asking students to imagine how they would feel if they were experiencing this in real time.  

"That view of the news, it definitely brought more awareness seeing the actual view of it instead of when we see it now; it's small clips," says Benjamin Smith, a senior at Breman.

And that is exactly what Simpson's goal is. He shares that it's important understand the full scope of 9/11, rather than watching small clips on social media.