9/11/01 - Teaching During Tragedy
/There are two events in history that are forever linked in my mind to Room 509, the room where I taught high school English. Those two events are Columbine and 9/11. I was in the classroom teaching when both these events burst upon the national scene and changed our lives forever.
I had barely begun my day of teaching on September 11, 2001 when the inconceivable news of some sort of an attack on the twin towers in New York reached me. Standing standing at my podium at the front of my classroom, I was taking roll for my first period class when I noticed a colleague who did not teach first period gesturing to me from the library which was attached to my classroom. She seemed terribly upset, shaken. She was the drama teacher, but her distress seemed extreme and quite concerning. I knew she had bad news of some sort, so I walked to the door at the back of the room and quietly asked if something was wrong. "Some SOBs have just flown airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York City," she said. "Does your television work? Turn it on. We're under attack."
Her words seemed inconceivable. I was unsure what to do with such news. My mind went back to the day I was teaching on April 20, 1999, and tried to form some sort of plan on what I should do next before I walked back into my classroom to begin a day of teaching, and yet, I also knew that I needed to be informed in order to intelligently lead my students through a day that could become disastrous.
"I can't just go back in there and turn on my t.v. and watch New York being attacked by air," I said to my collegue. "Find out if this is true and what is really happening. Surely, we will hear from administration if this is true. Surely, they will come and tell us what is happening." "Don't be too sure," she said. "You know how teachers are the last to know."
“True,” I said. We were always the last to find out what was really going on in the world outside our classrooms while we were teaching. Remember, we didn’t all have smart phones in our pockets back in 2001. The news was not available in seconds. Our connection to the outside world would come from the televisions we had in our classrooms.
Unbelievably, within no time at all, after the news first broke, parents were showing up at the school and taking their kids home. I had turned the television on by then trying get some news. I had decided that it was better that the students heard what was going on from a news source in an environment where I had some control. I would be able to help them make sense of what was happening. I asked the students to get out their journals to write as a way to process the news and all that they might be feeling about it. I told them to write down their questions that still lingered as to what was really happening. I said it was important to record what they were seeing happen. I encouraged them to write their emotions out. I offered to read and discuss privately what they had written. It seemed to be the only thing I could do that would help the students make sense of a world that had suddenly exploded before their eyes. Perhaps, my approach was wrong. I tried to keep communication open. I tried to reassure. I tried to comfort. I was not ever told how to hand such a thing in any of my teacher ed classes.
In those early moments, I could not allow myself the luxury of fully experiencing my own shock and grief during that event because I had a responsibility to help my students process and understand what was happening without causing them to become even more confused and afraid because of the way I presented myself.
I had to reassure them that we were safe. I had to make sure that they knew that I would be in charge of our little corner of the world while I tried to help them make sense of what was happening. I could not give in to panic. I could not go into some sort of stunned shutdown. I had to manage my classroom and look after my students.
I had not taken into account that our principal would come on the P.A.system about an hour after the first plane crashed into the towers with the following announcement:
"Teachers, you are to turn off your televisions. You are to follow the lesson plans you have for today. Any news that needs to be relayed to you and your students will come from the office. Do not excuse any student from your classroom unless they are sent for by the office. Do not allow your students to leave your classroom."
He was a former social studies teacher. Somehow, he didn't think it was appropriate that we watch history being made during class time. Somehow, he didn't think the delivery of the curriculum should be adjusted to use the current event topic as a writing prompt. We were to stay on task. There would be no television watching during instructional time in his school.
Ironically, in my tenth grade English classes we were to read, “Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets” by Jack Finney that day.* The story is about a man who goes after a piece of paper that flies out of a window in a skyscraper. He actually goes out on the ledge of the building to go after the paper.
So, while New York City was under attack, and while the people of New York were facing untold horror, we read about a guy stuck on a ledge of a skyscraper. I don't know when a story seemed more real than the one we read that day. I don't know when a story generated more discussion that seemed to really fit what was going on around us.
Now, twenty years later, high school students had not been born when the events of 9/11/01 took place. They are learning it as an event in history. When I taught during that day when history was taking place, I am still unsure if I handled teaching while witnessing history being made appropriately.
I only know that I wanted my students to know that when it appears the world is falling down around you, it is important to pull together, talk to each other, support each other, and to help each other feel less afraid.
We all lost a measure of innocence that day and in the days, months, and years since. Life as we knew it changed. The unthinkable had happened.
On that day, I remembered the bomb drills that we had practiced when I was a child in elementary school during the early 50’s. We practiced hiding under our desks, or other times we were directed to line up in the hallway put our face towards the wall, crouch down with our heads tucked between our knees. The fears of being bombed had been left behind in the 50’s, but for those of us who went to elementary school during those years, we remember those bomb drill practices well.
At the time of the attack, it seemed unbelievable to me in the second year of the new millennium, I found myself teaching in a classroom while watching air planes attack the center of New York City. We had not been trained to teach on how to respond to such times. How could anyone have predicted it?
Upon reflection, twenty years later, the great needs that teachers have when facing a classroom each day are unfathomable to me. The fear, the trauma, the corporate grief that must fill those classrooms has to be overwhelming.
Again, they must feel very much on their own. There will be mandates from the top, from governors, from boards of education, from principals, from curriculum directors, but now, as always, I fear that ultimately, teachers will be faced with making decisions about student care, curriculum, and all the while COVID controversies will be swirling around them.
They will walk into classrooms where there is no longer any trusted news sources to which they can turn. Curriculum mandates may not match their personal and professional beliefs. They will be dealing with mask mandates, and mad parents (nothing new there), and student educational needs that must seem unsurmountable.
Teaching on September 11, 2001, was challenging, but in my opinion, it can’t begin to compare to the challenge that all teachers are facing as they enter classrooms in September of 2021.
My hat is off to all the educators out there. I hope beyond all else that you are getting the support you need to job you have to do this year which is to teach. Do so with courage, passion, compassion, and love and care for your students. Teaching has always been a noble profession. I think now more than ever, it is not only a noble profession but a courageous one.
Remember the words of Jaime Escalante, as you enter the classrooms this year:
“I teach with my heart and my soul and not with my heart alone”
These words guided me on September 11, 2001, and on each day that I entered the classroom. If my students remember anything from that day that they spent with me, I hope they remember that I tried to create an environment of safety, trust, openness where they felt free to process their own confusion and fear.
I wonder if they remember what we read. I know I will never forget, but ultimately, I remember the fear that I saw on the faces of high school students trying to make sense of the world around them. I remember that I tried to facilitate processing that fear, the trauma that I saw they were experiencing, by reading a story that took place in a high rise in New York City in the 1950’s; writing about what they were seeing, feeling, questioning; listening to their fears, their questions, their feelings; and speaking by responding with wisdom, calmness, and caring.
That day, September 11, 2001, our lessons were based on current events, and we processed those events by using all four of the basic aspects of learning language: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I might not have followed the lesson plan completely, but I taught what what I was hired to do: teach language arts.
