Cant Keep Quiet!

My memories of September 11, 2001 are somewhat surreal.

At the time I was working as a special education teacher at an elementary school that had just been renovated. School had opened only a month before and the workers had finished working on the school during the first week. We didn't have internet access in the classrooms and the cable still wasn't working for the televisions.

My class was in a portable. I was a pull out teacher which means that I pulled the students from their classes each day for about an hour to help them build the skills they were lacking.

My class was new at the school. The previous year the unit had been housed at a different school. The furniture for my classroom arrived the Friday before school started. Many items that had been ordered for the room had still not arrived a month later. One of those items was a radio/boom box.

Basically, I was cut off from any outside information.

Shortly after 9:00 on 9/11, my principal came to my classroom. I was working with some second grade students when she interrupted the class and asked me to step out on the portable landing. I did as she asked, keeping my foot in the door so I could hear the students and look in from time to time. I had an aide but she was out of the room assisting some 1st grade students in their classroom at the time.

Let's be honest, the first thing any teacher will think when their principal asks them to step outside the classroom is that they have done something wrong or the principal has bad news about another teacher or a student. You don't automatically think, we've been attacked.

That, however, is what she told me. My principal told me that the United States was under attack and someone had flown planes into both of the buildings of the World Trade Center. At the time that was all anyone knew. The Pentagon still had not been attacked and both buildings were still standing.

My principal told me that the decision had been made not to tell the students what was happening. It was felt that the children wouldn't be able to comprehend what was happening and might panic. Especially in the lower grades. This made a lot of sense to me. Hell, I didn't really comprehend what was happening.

Not everyone obeyed the principal's order. At least one 5th grade class had the television on and was able to get a very poor reception from a local station. The teacher in that classroom was from New York City. Other 4th and 5th grade teachers had radios on. At least one 3rd grade teacher also had a radio on. The rest of the teachers tried to keep teaching students like it was any other day. I did the same thing since most of my students were in kindergarten through second grade.

As the day went on my aide came in and out of the classroom. She acted as my link to the outside world, bringing back information every time she came back to the portable. The Pentagon had been hit by a plane. The South Tower had collapsed. The North Tower had also collapsed. Another plane might be involved.

Parents started arriving at the school to pick up their children. I had only 3 5th grade students and one of those told me he had a brother that was a police officer in New York City. Shortly after he came to my classroom I was called over the PA system and told his parents were there to pick him up. I found out later that his parents had not been able to get in touch with their oldest son. They wanted their youngest with them as details came in during the day.

Even though the younger students were kept sheltered from the events of that day, they all knew something was happening. They'd seen their friends leave as their parents arrived. They'd seen their teachers conversing in whispers, some with tears in their eyes, others just looking stunned.

My last group of the day were first graders. At the time I was numb. I couldn't even remember what I had planned for their lesson for that day. I had my aide pick up the students to give their teachers a break and let the kids come to my portable and play. At that point all flights had been grounded and all the hijacked planes had been accounted for. The death toll was estimated in the 10s of thousands.

My principal allowed everyone to leave with the students that day. It wasn't until I was in my car that I was finally able to hear a radio station and get an update on what was happening. A part of me still didn't want to believe that everything I'd heard could possibly be true. Tragically, it was.

I sat in the school parking lot for some time just listening to the reports on the radio. Then I started the car and drove home. Once I was home I was finally able to see what everyone else had already seen; video of the second plane striking and both towers falling.

I had hoped that the news was wrong. It wasn't. I had hoped that if it wasn't wrong, the news had been exaggerated. It wasn't. The possible death toll was so much higher because no one knew for sure who had survived and who had died. The numbers weren't exaggerated, just uncertain.

Sleep didn't come easy that night. When it did come, it was filled with images of explosions and death.