VIDEO: Digital Experience Helps New Generations Learn About 9/11
NEW YORK — As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum is using personal stories to help a new generation understand an event they may not remember.
The museum has launched a digital learning experience featuring family members of those killed in the attacks, including Olivia Perez-Johntry, whose father, Anthony Perez, died at the World Trade Center.
The educational experience, designed for students in third grade and above, includes a film featuring family stories as well as lesson plans and discussion questions for teachers and students.
Perez-Johntry was 10 years old when her father went to work at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and never came home.
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Perez worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of the North Tower. His name is now among the thousands inscribed at the 9/11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan.
“So this is Grandpa Tony — I wish you could have met him,” Perez-Johntry says in the film.
For Perez-Johntry, remembering her father means holding on to the everyday moments that shaped her childhood.
“He fostered a huge love for Star Wars and video games in my own life,” she says. “So whenever I’m enjoying either of those hobbies, I often think of him.”
Perez was also a Catholic who attended Catholic school and Sacred Heart Church in Island Park, Long Island. Perez-Johntry remembers attending Sunday Mass with her father and two siblings.
“I just remember going to church with him and my two siblings, and it was just what we did on Sundays,” she says. “It was just the godly thing to do.”
She vividly remembers the morning of the attacks.
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“I knew the second I heard that the World Trade Center was attacked, I knew that my father was no longer on this earthly plane,” Perez-Johntry says.
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum says the digital learning experience is intended to help students understand the events of Sept. 11 and their impact on the world today.
Noah Rauch, senior vice president for education and public programs at the museum, said the need for 9/11 education is growing as more students have no personal memory of the attacks.
“We have 100 million Americans who have no memory of the attacks, and yet they’re living in a world that was shaped by what happened on that day,” Rauch says.
The museum is using firsthand accounts and family stories to make the history more accessible to younger students.
“Stories like Olivia’s and others help us do that and help the next generation connect to this history,” Rauch says.
Perez-Johntry, now a high school teacher herself, also talks about her father with her students.
She said she wants them to remember him as more than a victim of the attacks.
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“It was always lighthearted and fun and laughter with him,” she says. “So I feel the need to always perpetuate that for my class and my students.”
The 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks comes as a growing number of Americans have no firsthand memories of the day.
For Perez-Johntry, sharing her father’s story is a responsibility she takes seriously.
“Knowing that he’s not physically here, but I know spiritually he is here,” she says.
She hopes her father’s memory can help future generations understand both the horrors of 9/11 and the importance of remembering the people behind the names.
“I feel it is my duty to speak about the horrors, but to also be the beacon of positivity,” Perez-Johntry says.
The film will be available starting on September 11th as well as a live chat with Museum staff throughout the day. Students and teachers can pre-register by heading here.