BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. – Scott Kuschel knew he had to change his lesson plan for Tuesday after seeing the news unfold about the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
"The main message I was trying to get through is that there are so many things that we don't know yet," said Kuschel.
Kuschel is the History Department Chair at Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills. He put plans to do test review during a 10th grade World History class on hold so the students could talk about the bombings. He said he knew that would be on the minds of his students.
"I wanted to know what they were thinking and see if they had any questions because we have talked about terrorism," said Kuschel.
With 15 years experience as a teacher, Kuschel said you cannot teach history without acknowledging current events. His students appreciated Tuesday's lesson.
"He really told us, you know, what's real, what's not real," said student Spencer Carter.
"It's good to know what happened, learn about it and know what's going on, how it's being, they're trying to find the people, how it's being worked," said Brendan Pyc, a student in Kuschel's class.
Kuschel used news video clips and a street view from Google Maps to help bring the story home for his students.
"I tried to want to show it from a street level view so they could really get a feeling of, you know, this is a small area and how many people would be packed in there, and what it would have been like," said Kuschel. "That's the one thing about technology, it allows it to become more alive for them."
Students in Kuschel's class shared how they felt about seeing and hearing about the bombings.
"It just kind of tells everyone that, you know, it can happen anywhere," said Carter.
"It makes me feel sad just know that somebody is willing to just take people's lives like that and injure people for a reason that we don't know yet but I'm sure it wasn't a good enough reason to take people's lives," said Pyc.