One of the hardest jobs a teacher often has is connecting their students to the curriculum. But by drawing parallels between “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and present-day military, senior Humanities teacher Regina Harden was able to do so.

“One of the things we decided to do in reading the novel is not just think about the fate of the soldiers in the platoon,” Harden said, “but also the connections that we make to those we have in our family who have fought in the military … We decided to make this wall. The first time we did it was last year and all students could write down the name of the family member [on a paper ‘brick’] and kind of expanded.”

Along with the Veterans Wall, students created behind her desk, Harden showed clips from “Forrest Gump” and “Letters from Vietnam” and shared music and poems to help her students connect with the novel.

“My dad’s retired, but I also have two cousins that are in active duty in the military and it’s kind of surprising ‘cause, when you’re in the war you don’t talk about it or anything,” senior Montana Kubista said. “And, so, just to kind of see what it’s a little bit like … is really interesting ‘cause you can’t really understand what it’s like until you witnessed it first hand.”

Though there were many thoughts on creating the wall, a common one was thinking of the realities of war.

“You just need all kinds of support in case a family member dies over there and they don’t come back or come back and they’re completely different person,” senior Joshua Reyes said. “You need all sorts of support.”

According to Harden, some students had a hard time reading O’Brien’s novel due to his reality-based portrayal of war and their own personal connections. But she thought creating the wall while reading the book was worth it.

“I think it’s important,” she said. “I’ve had students several times throughout the past few days since [the wall has] been up that just came up and they just read the names or they go specifically back to their parents’ names. So, it kind of serves a little bit of the same function as what the Vietnam Wall does. It gives you the chance to say ‘that’s my uncle and he was important and I wanted people to remember them.’”

As Harden’s classes finish reading O’Brien’s novel, she will have her students create memorials for the soldiers portrayed in the book to complete the wall.

“I try to make it a good experience for them,” Harden said. “No matter what you’re reading, as a teacher, there’s a lot on us to try to help students connect everything and this is one way I feel like kind of does.”