By Dennis Kane
Marquette High School, West Count
Currently I am teaching Speech and Debate classes at Marquette High School in West Count. I meet daily with about 100 9th - 12th grade students. We have cable in the classroom at Marquette. We received word about the September 11 disaster right after both towers were attacked. In all my classes we watched everything unfolding, nothing else was accomplished. This was also true for the rest of the school.
Two of the classes that I teach are debate classes. We have been working hard getting ready for debating this year which entails gathering lots of evidence from many different sources about the topic for the year. The topic is set in the winter of the year. What is this year's topic? Resolved: that the United States should enact a foreign policy limiting the use of weapons of mass destruction. One of the main areas of concern that we had already studied and gathered evidence about was terrorism! In these classes, the tragic events are going to be something that we will discuss for the entire school year.
We have talked about the events in all the classes, but especially the debate classes. The reactions of the students have been pretty much the same as all the adults that I know. I have some that are obsessing on the events, some that are aware but try to not think about the events and even a couple who feel that the events are being overblown! It is difficult to moderate their discussions because I am still processing all of the events myself. However, I am being very careful to listen to what the students are saying (non-judgmentally). All of us are working the grief process and I know that one of the best things to do is to talk with others.
Now, what do we tell our children? I think what we need to do is the same. Listen. Be there for them. Comfort them. Give them a safe place to live. Help them find some meaning in the rest of life. I am not going to try to pass myself as an expert on giving children advice. I am as full of questions about the September 11 attacks as everyone else is. How can I explain this to a child when I cannot explain the disaster to myself? How someone in the name of anything sacred can take innocent lives is beyond my understanding.
Our children are looking to us for answers and even more than that, how to react to these things. Be aware of your conversations and television viewing when you are around your children. Even the young can understand when people are upset on television. Try not to watch too much of the updates with your children around.
There are sources that we can use in our own adoption community. There are counselors available if you think your child needs someone to talk to about everything happening. Other adoptive parents understand the concerns that we all have about the racism that is growing, talk with them. We must spend time with our children helping them try to understand. The time that we spend helping them will help us!
I would like to end with a quote from Pres. John F. Kennedy. This is from a speech that he gave proposing a moratorium on aboveground nuclear testing on June 10, 1963:
"I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived-yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.
What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children-not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women-not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interest, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor-it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that:
We all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air.
We all cherish our children's future.
And we are all mortal." 
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