My students asked these questions — more difficult than those posed by the U.S. media — during a role play in which I pretended to be President George W. Bush giving his 2003 State of the Union address a few months before the U.S. invaded Iraq.

The mock press conference was part of a unit in which I blended studying about the war with preparing my students for the New York State English Language Arts Regents Exam, which they must pass in order to graduate. Despite the usual misgivings about what I could and should have done better, I felt pleased that I had been able to meld such an important topic with the district's impossible-to-avoid curricular focus on test prep.

I teach 11th grade English in Brooklyn at a high school serving a low-income, predominantly Latino population. Every year I have to prepare my students, many of whom are English language learners (ELL), for the Regents Exam. Because half of the exam is based on nonfiction writing, I decided to create a nonfiction unit that focused on the war but that would also allow my students to practice skills they need for the Regents in summarizing, annotating, note-taking and responding to nonfiction writing.

The first day of what became an almost month-long unit, I asked students to write down everything they knew about the war. We then shared the writings aloud, giving me a sense of the students' level of understanding. Some students thought Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, while others knew that Osama bin Laden had no relationship with Iraq. Some didn't even know where Iraq was.

Overall, students were overwhelmingly against the war and hostile towards the Bush Administration. At the same time, a number were considering joining the military after high school and would undoubtedly end up in Iraq. I felt I had a responsibility to ensure that they would be able to make informed choices about their future after high school.