Ten-year-old Megan Peters got to stay up a little past her usual 8:30 bedtime Wednesday night, so she watched some television in her room.

The sleep timer turned off the TV at 9:50 p.m. as Megan drifted off to sleep to the sights and sounds of war.

”It was on every channel,” the Buckingham Elementary School fifth-grader said Thursday morning. ”I dreamed about (war.)”

The new war in Iraq has started, and so, too, have the questions from children. Some local teachers said it was business as usual in class Thursday and Friday with little or no discussion about Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But other teachers said the students were anxious to talk about the war and are curious about the potential consequences after watching events unfold on television.

”The students came in chatting away about bombs and war,” said Perry Atkinson, Megan’s teacher at Buckingham. He said the students were really high strung and he knew he needed to let them talk before they’d settle down and learn.

”These guys are 10- and 11-years-old,” he said. ”It affects them.”

Molly Vernarecci, 11, said students in Mr. Atkinson’s class asked about the types of planes the U.S. used, when the war started and what exactly was happening. ”It makes you wonder what’s really going to happen,” Molly said.

”Hopefully all the innocent people will be protected,” said her classmate, 10-year-old Seth Brent.

Atkinson said it was his job as a teacher to not let events like this affect the instruction students get in the classroom. He said teachers were put to a similar test after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

”But at the same time, we have to try to calm their fears and help them feel safe,” he said.

Discussion of the Renaissance was put on hold for a while Friday in Chris Rutz’s eighth-grade world history class at High Desert Middle School so they could briefly discuss the latest developments of the war. The class has been spending the first 15 minutes every day to catch up with what’s going on. An entire wall is devoted to ”War in Iraq” and is covered with coverage of the war – newspaper clippings, pictures, summaries and student statements about what they think of the war.

He asked the students what they had heard; told them what he had heard; and they asked more questions about the first casualties.

”People are starting to die,” Rutz told them.

Seven students in his sixth-period class raised their hands when asked if they knew someone involved in the war in some way – one student’s niece’s stepmom, one student’s second cousin, one student’s brother’s friends, one student’s brother.

At Bend High School Thursday, students were greeted with the usual morning announcements before Principal Sue Shields offered something from a program called ”Project Wisdom,” which collects motivational messages for schools to read over public address systems.

”Our nation and our world are facing a major challenge,” Shields said. ”Going to war is both dangerous and difficult, lives may be lost. You may be feeling sad, afraid or powerless to do anything about it.

”You may be in favor of the war and feeling very proud of our nation and our troops. You may be against the war and feeling very frustrated. Or maybe you don’t know how to feel about it all … ”

She continued, ”Wars end. People heal. We overcome our challenges and life goes on …

Shields said part of an educator’s job is to acknowledge everyone’s feelings on an issue like this, because everyone is feeling something different.

Kathy Reid said she’s been trying to avoid the issue in her third- and fourth-grade class at Lava Ridge. But that became impossible Wednesday when an airplane flew over the school, sending a student to the window yelling ”Oh, no, here come the war planes.”

”I was obviously forced to discuss the situation,” Reid said in an e-mail. She called the class together to tell them that it was very unlikely that Bend would be attacked. She also asked the students what they had heard about the possibility of war.

”I was amazed at the details they were aware of,” she said. ”They pick up much more than we expect from adult conversations and news programs … The kids are listening and they’re definitely frightened.”

Kay Pierce, a fifth-grade teacher at Elk Meadow Elementary, said she, like other teachers across the district, wasn’t talking about the war and that it was business as usual.

”It hasn’t been brought up by any student to this point, so I feel let sleeping dogs lie,” she said in an e-mail. ”If it does come up – we have two students that have dads in the National Guard that are awaiting deployment – I think my role would be to listen and be supportive if they have concerns, but not to take any stand pro or con.

”It really is a role that parents need to play. It is not a role in the elementary classroom.”

Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, a nationally-recognized specialist in early childhood education, said that in the coming days and weeks, many children will mask subjects that trouble them with other subjects until they know an adult wants to talk to them about it. They’ll express their feelings when drawing pictures or practicing writing, Clemens said.

”So the optimum teacher response to the current situation is to use a heightened sensitivity to any anxiety, tensions or stress behavior and open it up,” she said in a phone interview from her San Francisco home. ”By saying, for example, A lot of grownups are worried now, are you worried too?’ Let the child put in his or her own words what that worry seems to be about.”

She said she’s already starting to get e-mails from teachers who are trying to deal with numerous students crying in class. In one class a student told a teacher that his family was only watching ”the war channel” and the mother wondered why the child was so stressed.

”I believe the word duh’ appears to be the answer to that question,” Clemens said.

She said parents should limit the amount of exposure young children get to the continuous war coverage on TV.

”Watching horrors is never good for the human spirit, particularly the young and formative spirit,” she said. ”What children need to understand is that there is bad stuff happening and that the grown-ups will take the very best care of them. Grown-ups are actively working to make things better.”

Paden Hill, a 13-year-old eighth-grader in Rutz’s class, asked the question everyone – regardless of age – is asking.

”When does it stop?”

Ted Taylor can be reached at 541-383-0375 or ttaylor@bendbulletin.com.