When Americans learned Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had been found and killed after a decade-long manhunt, history teachers were revising their lesson plans.

Social studies classes about 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan suddenly became even more relevant to students. Those who were too young to remember where they were when New York's twin towers fell would be able to pinpoint the moment they learned the al-Qaida mastermind behind it all is dead.

"I'm leading off with it each period," said Tim Bailey, an 8th grade U.S. history teacher at Salt Lake City's Northwest Middle School. He started each class by showing President Barack Obama's speech to the nation disclosing the news.

"I think [the students] get the significance of it," Bailey said. "They never knew a world before 9/11."

Many of his "cynical" students peppered him with questions about how anyone can be certain that bin Laden is really dead. They questioned the terrorist's burial at sea. Bailey shared what he knew about the circumstances of the terrorist's death from reading news reports.

Explaining current events to students is a required part of Utah's curriculum, said Pam Su'a, a social studies specialist at Jordan School District.

"Hopefully, all teachers are talking about this, at the level of their students, to help even our youngest students understand what is happening," Su'a said. "We know students are afraid of things like this happening in the world and so a good teacher will talk them through, give them good information … and help them make sense of it and understand it."

Jodi Ide, a teacher at Brighton High, said her sophomore students Monday initially were abuzz with the news of the British royal wedding Friday between Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Ide steered the discussion in her world civilizations courses toward news of bin Laden's death. Her classes, too, watched Obama's speech.

"[Students] were really worried. They had heard their parents talk about anxieties about retaliation" by terrorists, Ide said. "I didn't necessarily have any answers for them besides to say that's a reality. We'll have to deal with that as a country and — as Obama said — be vigilant."

Ide said she was impressed by how every student in those classes paid close attention to the entire nine-minute speech.

"They don't even remember a pre-take-your-shoes-off [security line] at the airport. It's almost something they've become so used to: Oh, Osama bin Laden is hiding," Ide said. "Most of them found out about [his death] on Facebook."

rwinters@sltrib.com