For young South Florida students, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is a chapter in their history books, not a distant memory from a quarter century ago.
At the start of class on Friday, American government teacher John Dalman told his students at Palm Beach Central High School to put everything away, even notebooks.
He hit play on a video showing the planes hitting the towers and some of the aftermath in New York City.
"The events of 9/11 shook our country," he said in a somber voice. "It took our breath away. It knocked us on our heels."
READ MORE: The South Florida journalist still chasing unanswered 9/11 questions, 25 years on
The 2001 attacks on New York City's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 killed nearly 3,000 people. To this day it remains the most consequential terrorist attack against the United States.
Dalman has been teaching for almost 30 years. In fact, he was in the classroom in Lake Worth High School on 9/11 25 years ago. It’s something he will never forget.
But the thing about forgetting is you first have to live it. So, how do you teach a generation to never forget when they have nothing to remember?
"It's very easy to teach when they actually have present knowledge, current knowledge," Dalman told WLRN after class. "I tell the kids, 'History is a big story.' They have to figure out where they fit in in the story. Although they weren't alive, the consequences and repercussions are felt today."
Throughout the whole lecture, Dalman had a political cartoon projected on the board behind him. A young boy tells a man, "Tell me about that day."
"I still can't talk about it," the man says, his eyes wide with trauma.
The cartoon figures cast shadows of the Twin Towers, the symbol of what will loom over the country for the rest of time, and what's essentially unfolding in this classroom today.
Teaching this over the years, going from students who lived through that day to students who learn it through him, Dalman says it never gets easier, especially when he listens to the voice messages victims left their family members.
" You get choked up every time," he said. "It's very emotional. And like I told the students, 'It's okay. It's okay to feel that. That's a real feeling.'"
That's what senior Natalie Giro, in Dalman's class, takes away from the lesson: The way to connect with history is through empathy.
"Like Mr. Dalman did with the video, showing the real people that were affected rather than just the events that took place because sometimes it can be difficult to connect empathy to plain events," she told WLRN.
"I feel like I could speak for all my classmates," she said, that the video made her feel "sad [and] empathy for the people that lost their loved ones."
Florida passed a law in 2023 requiring middle school students enrolled in civics education and high schoolers taking U.S. government to receive at least 45 minutes of about what happened on that harrowing day the Twin Towers were brought down.
Each district is encouraged to find age-appropriate teaching resources that meet the learning requirements, including global terrorism, the timeline of events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the "selfless heroism" of first responders and civilians that day.
The law also requires the governor to make a yearly proclamation designating "9/11 Heroes’ Day” for public schools to observe.
But most, if not all, the students in Dalman's class learned about the terror attacks in elementary school.
Olivia Guillen, also a senior in Dalman's class, remembers first learning about when she was 7 or 8 years old and her teacher read a book about it in class.
" She didn't go too much into it since we were still younger," Guillen said. She remembers the parts about the attack on the Pentagon and President George W. Bush being in a classroom in Sarasota when he was told of the tragedy.
This history shaped the world these students have grown up in and now learn about. In his lesson, Dalman also covered how airport security changed, the first responders on the scene and even the hijackers' ties to Florida.
"This is important because it should be part of our culture. We were attacked" Dalman said. "I'm a history teacher, so you know, those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. That's part of the reason we're teaching this. We're blessed here, we're very comfortable here, but you need to be on your toes and be aware."
