The headline says: “The day the world changed”. It’s right; nothing has been quite the same since September 11. The shock gives way to an understanding that we live in a world in which innocent people can be killed at a moment’s notice, for one cause or another.

I teach about Guy Fawkes every year. Versions of the national curriculum may succeed each other rapidly, but Guy Fawkes hangs in there, especially at key stage 1. In my work as a teacher trainer for primary history, I try to give my beginning teachers a range of approaches suited to the history curriculum. Guy Fawkes isa splendid vehicle.

I tell the story, omitting the anonymous warning letter (sent by one of the conspirators to a friend in Parliament warning him to stay away from the building that day), to demonstrate the power of storytelling as a teaching approach. I show students the warning letter, and through it demonstrate how to use challenging documents with primary-age children. I take the role of Guy Fawkes and have students “hot-seat” me with questions about my life, beliefs, and motives. We use quill pens, and the students practise 17th-century writing, considering what they might learn from this activity. We discuss the letter as a literacy hour text.

Until the day two jets hurtled into the World Trade Center, it was just a story. It was a piece of teaching I enjoyed, and it gave these new teachers ideas for lessons that would be useful on their first placement in November. But that day’s horror reached into our history workshops. It has changed the way I think about and teach this topic.

This year, I launched into the story. As I told of preparations for blowing up Parliament, I trembled at the thought of the lives that would have been destroyed had the plot been successful. This was 17th-century terrorism, though distanced and sanitised by time, but now appearing in all its horror. I had problems going into role as Guy Fawkes for I could not comprehend his motives or appear positive about them. No matter what injustices were heaped upon Catholics during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, nothing justified their actions.

I opened up to the students and expressed my discomfort. They were wonderful: they had experienced similar feelings. Together we groped our way to new understandings of how we might approach this topic. We needed to be open about the parallels between this story and the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. We had to be explicit that Bonfire Night is a celebration that these 17th-century terrorists did not get away with it. Innocent lives were not lost and we rejoice in that.

I learned an important lesson that day: no story is just a story. I will still teach Guy Fawkes, but with a fresh understanding of the moral issues and emotions. I won’t go into role as him again: that approach will have to move to a historical character with whom I have some empathy.

Rosie Turner-Bisset is senior lecturer in primary teacher education at the University of Hertfordshire. She writes here in a personal capacity