Tulsa Teachers Put Textbooks Away, Talk About Paris Attacks

The deadly terrorist attacks on Paris have been all over the news for days.

Monday, several area high school teachers paused their lesson plans to talk to their students about what happened.

At Booker T. Washington, John Waldron felt it was more important to put the textbooks for his World Studies class aside, and just talk.

"In Paris, at least three, maybe six teams of attackers struck sites around Paris and more than 130 people were killed," he said.

It wasn't on the lesson plan for the day, but the history teacher felt the discussion was just as valuable as anything in a textbook, if not more.

"This is an age where we like to measure everything and make it about the test. But what if it's about that moment where the student really needs to understand a thing? When they have a question that needs to be discussed," Waldron said.

He started with the how and why of the recent attacks on Paris and Beirut. Then, students like Nathan Levit asked questions about ISIS, about the safety of our country, and whether blocking refugees is truly the answer.

"We have a responsibility to know what's happening and know how it affects us," Levit said.

The senior said the discussion helped him understand the severity of what happened, and why he and his classmates should care about opposite sides of the globe.

Levit said, "Something like this really helps bring everything into perspective because people are now calling this France's 9/11."

Waldron said there's a chance the class holds the next generation of leaders that just might have a solution.

"I think it's our responsibility as educators to inform young people in a democracy of the condition that the world is in so that, maybe, they can find a way out of this mess for us," he said.

Other high schools, like Bishop Kelley, and even other universities, like Oral Roberts, said they talked about the attacks in class as well.