Go to previous slideGo to next slidePeople in Paris paid tribute on Sunday to the victims of Friday night’s attacks.
CreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times
CURRENT EVENTS
Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.
Updated, Nov. 17
Note: This piece began as an extended edition of our daily News Q’s feature, but now includes a much great range of Times reporting on the Paris attacks, along with suggested questions and activities. We will continue to update the post.
How are you addressing these events in your classroom?
I. Understanding the Basics
What happened in Paris on Nov. 13? How many locations were attacked? How many people were killed or injured? Who carried out the attacks? What is unknown at this time? How have people in Paris and around the world responded?
What questions and concerns about this news do you have?
To help answer those questions, students might read “Paris Attacks: What We Know and Don’t Know” and/or watch this video:
Terror in Paris: Minute by Minute
Video and stories from eyewitnesses reveal the horror of the attacks across Paris.
By DEBORAH ACOSTA and YOUSUR AL-HLOU on Publish DateNovember 15, 2015.II. This section has been updated to make it more “evergreen” for teaching and learning. Instead of linking to just one piece, we now suggest students choose their own from the extensive Times coverage and share it with small groups or the whole class. Use the links and questions below to help them explore.
http://www.nytimes.com/news-event/attacks-in-paris">page collecting all Times Paris reporting</a>" name="100000004042954"/>Visit this page, which contains all Times reporting on this developing story. Find an article, graphic, photograph, video, interview or anything else that you think is especially important or useful, then answer the following questions about it:
1. Why did you choose this piece? Why is it important or interesting to you?
2. What does this add to your understanding of the attacks in Paris and their repercussions?
3. What questions or concerns does this piece raise for you? How could you follow up on some of those?
4. What connections can you make between this piece and something else you’ve read, heard or seen, whether on the same topic or about something else? Why?
5. When big news like this happens, there are often ripple effects that go far beyond the original event. Look at this page of live updates. What ripple effects from the attacks in Paris can you already see elsewhere in the world? What more can you predict?
III. Going Further
What Would You Like to Say to the People of Paris?
After learning about what happened on Nov. 13, we invite you topost your thoughts to our related Student Opinion question.
Why France?
This article begins:
The massacre Friday night by militants wielding assault rifles provoked an eerie and disturbing sense of familiarity for all of France. But that feeling was even more profound for one quickly gentrifying, multicultural neighborhood of Paris known for its “bourgeois bonhomie” — the 11th Arrondissement.
At least five of the attacks took place here, some just blocks from where the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was hit in January.
Why did many think the terrorists chose that neighborhood? And why France instead of the United States? The Los Angeles Times answers that question in this short piece.
What is the Islamic State?
The Evolution of ISIS
How has ISIS, a 21st-century terrorist organization with a retrograde religious philosophy, spread from Iraq to Syria, Libya and beyond?
By Quynhanh Do on Publish DateDecember 13, 2014.What is the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh? Watch the video above, and read this explainer, “How ISIS Expanded Its Threat,” to learn more. Research its past and current attempts to gain power. What appears to be its ultimate goal? How have the United States and other countries used military actions to try to stop its spread?
Finally, you might read the Times editorial “What Will Come After Paris” and decide if you agree with the opinions expressed there about what the world should — and should not — do to defeat ISIS.
For more help, see our lesson plans The ISIS Threat: Teaching About the Complex War Raging in Iraq and ... and Teenagers and Extremism: Investigating the ISIS Recruitment Pipeline.
Paris and Beirut
On Nov. 12, Beirut, Lebanon, was also the scene of a terrorist attack, one that killed 43 people but was overshadowed by what happened in Paris just one day later. The article “Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten” states:
Around the crime scenes in south Beirut and central Paris alike, a sense of shock and sadness lingered into the weekend, with cafes and markets quieter than usual. The consecutive rampages, both claimed by the Islamic State, inspired feelings of shared, even global vulnerability — especially in Lebanon, where many expressed shock that such chaos had reached France, a country they regarded as far safer than their own.
But for some in Beirut, that solidarity was mixed with anguish over the fact that just one of the stricken cities — Paris — received a global outpouring of sympathy akin to the one lavished on the United States after the 9/11 attacks.
Read that article, then read this piece from Vox, Did the media ignore the Beirut bombings? Or did readers?
What do you think? How would you answer the question Vox poses? What is your reaction to the words of an editor who said, about a 2010 bombing in Baghdad, “It doesn’t matter what art we put with this or if it’s at the top of the homepage. Nobody is going to read this.”
The Paris Attacks and the Migration Crisis
Fear Rising Among Refugees in Paris
Refugees in central Paris have heightened fears about their security and their future in France following Friday's attacks.
By STEFANIA ROUSSELLE and TAIGE JENSEN on Publish DateNovember 15, 2015.Why, as a result of these attacks, has talk about the migrant crisis in Europe “shifted sharply to security over compassion”? How could it complicate the plan to resettle migrants? Do you agree with those who worry that the Paris attacks will cause a “wave of hate” against the largely poor and Muslim migrants? Read this article to learn more.
In the United States, Republican fury over illegal immigration and border security took on a new dimension after the attacks.
Twenty-five Republican governors vowed to block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states, arguing that the safety of Americans was at stake after the Paris attacks by terrorists including a man who entered Europe with a Syrian passport and posed as a migrant. Among the governors were those from Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and other states that have already resettled relatively large numbers of refugees from among the 1,900 Syrians accepted by the United States in the last four years.
How do you think the country you live in will handle refugees from this crisis? Why? How?
For more help, see our lesson plan, Border Challenges: Responding to the Global Migration Crisis.
Look for the Helpers, Look for the Flowers
In a Motherlode post, KJ Dell’antonia writes about a Parisian father in the video above who tells his child, “They might have guns, but we have flowers.” She writes:
The now famous “look for the helpers” advice from Fred Rogers is never out of place, whether you’re talking to a toddler or a teenager. We could add, now, a second suggestion: Look for the flowers. Look at the people grieving and reacting, at the displays of solidarity from Egypt and Abu Dhabi to the United States and Canada. Look for the little things people, shocked into awareness by tragedy, are doing for one another in this moment when many of us can feel how alike we all are, in what we love, what we value, and what can be so quickly taken from us.
Who are the helpers in Paris? In Beirut? Elsewhere in the world? What are they doing? What might you do?
Talking to Children About Terrorism
Explaining Terror to Children
Why a French newspaper for kids refuses to sugarcoat the horror of the Paris attacks.
By PAMELA DRUCKERMAN, STEFANIA ROUSSELLE, BEN C. SOLOMON and BEN LAFFIN on Publish DateNovember 17, 2015.Though The Learning Network is for students 13 and older, when traumatic news events happen, we often write about sensitive ways to discuss it in the classroom. This guest post on 10 Ways to Talk to Students About Sensitive Issues in the News, for instance, was originally created in 2012 in response to the Trayvon Martin story.
Pamela Druckerman, who lives in Paris, writes about answering her own children’s questions, and about the philosophy of the French in general about discussing topics like this with kids:
French newspapers and TV shows have done stories and special issues on how to talk to kids about the attacks. I’ve been reading them avidly. Their advice springs straight from Françoise Dolto, the influential psychoanalyst who was the French equivalent of Dr. Spock: Be honest.
Beginning in 1976, Dr. Dolto did a daily 10-minute radio show in which she responded to letters from parents. One of her recurring messages was that kids don’t need to be constantly happy; they need to understand what’s going on around them. Even in tough times, parents should tell them the truth — often in simple terms — and help them process it. It’s far worse if kids sense that something’s wrong, but no one talks to them about it. She advised bringing even a small child to a grandparent’s funeral, and gently explaining, “Voilà, it’s the burial of your grandfather, it’s something that happens.”
Do you agree? What is your advice on talking to younger children about news like this? How should your own teachers and parents handle it? Why?
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