LE CLAIRE, Iowa — A Pleasant Valley Junior High social studies teacher dedicates an entire week to teaching his eighth graders about 9/11.
"I asked them what they know, and they don't know a lot about the day," Jeff Paul said.
Unlike him; Paul remembers exactly where he was on that day in 2001.
"I remember I had overslept my college course, and my roommate woke me up actually, when both towers had already been hit, and we were just glued to the news all day," Paul said. "I remember things like gas stations raising their prices. ... I remember in the aftermath how record numbers of people enlisted in the armed forces."
However, his students weren't born for another eight years. Student Isabelle Karemer said she only knew the basics of what happened that day.
"Sort of just that it was a terrorist attack where the planes hit the Twin Towers, and that's pretty much it," she said.
Grant Cabay said he remembered watching a video of the planes hitting the World Trade Center in third grade, but he didn't understand the gravity of it then.
"I didn't know basically, how many people were saved and returned as heroes," Cabay said. "I also didn't realize how many people were actually in the towers that died."
Earlier this week, Paul showed a documentary called "Surviving 9/11."
"I think it blows their minds to see the images and to see the video of the towers burning," Paul said. "For them, it's kind of surreal."
Students said they learned a lot from the video and were inspired by the stories in it.
"I couldn't believe that they had survived it the way they did, because in one of the stories, somebody came back, who was already safe, came back to help them," Cabay said. "He was just a normal civilian, and he saved the person who was about to die. ... I just can't believe how many people sacrificed their own lives to save the lives of other people."
"It was sort of cool to hear their stories, especially the people who were in the buildings, to see what their initial thoughts were because they had no idea what had happened," Karemer said. "Some of them thought it was an earthquake, so they stayed in their offices for a little bit. ... It's sort of inspiring, because they had to figure out what to do and everything."
The students also made posters that will hang on the classroom wall for the rest of the school year. Karemer drew a tally mark to represent every single person who died on 9/11: 2,996. Cabay's featured the word "remember." Many of the posters had the words "we will never forget" written on them, drawings of soldiers, and newspaper clippings and headlines from that day.
"It's going to be very patriotic, I think, just looking at all those flags and all the inspiring words," Cabay said. "I think looking up at it, everybody will feel of sense of unity with America."
One of the things Paul hopes his students have learned is the unity that followed the terrorist attacks.
"In the aftermath of 9/11, the country came together like I've never seen in my lifetime -- seemed so united," Paul said. "Back then if you were Democrat, Republican, neither party, we were just united, and so I try to devote this day to bringing us together."
They're also learning what changed after that day.
"They've grown up in a society where airports, you know, security is really tight," he said. "And to correlate how this day changed all of that, like before this day, you could show up to a flight, you know, 45 minutes before and get on a plane. You didn't have to take your shoes off and walk through an X-ray machine."