Remembering 9-11 and a small trailer classroom

 

(This is reprinted from the September 11, 2020 Turner Report with the only changes being to changes made to reflect that 21 years have passed.)

Twenty-one years ago, I was in my third year of teaching middle school writing classes in a small trailer located by the Marlin Pinnell Gymnasium on the Diamond school campus. I often think about those days and even more so today when I saw a Facebook comment from one of my former students who wrote about being in my classroom when she learned of the attack on the World Trade Center September 11, 2001.

I taught seventh and eighth grade writing classes in a course labeled as "Current Issues," because at that time I was certified to teach social studies but not English. I also taught a sixth grade version of the class that students attended for nine weeks before moving on to another of what were referred to as "wheel classes."

We were in the TA or home room portion of the day when the middle school secretary Missy Snow came into the trailer and told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

The television I had in my classroom was not very good, but it was better than most of the others in the middle school at that time. It only picked up one channel, KODE, so the students and I watched, most of the time silently, as Peter Jennings anchored ABC's coverage of the most terrifying event to ever occur in the United States.

For some inexplicable reason, the news department at Channel 12 had the horrible idea that the station needed to break away from ABC's coverage for about 10 minutes each hour to give local perspective. 

Unfortunately, the people they interviewed didn't provide much information and did little to help us understand what happened.

During those breaks, I turned the volume all the way down and began discussions, something we did on a regular basis in my classes. Students asked me questions and I answered them to the best of my ability, and they offered their thoughts on what they were witnessing.

Despite putting on a show of youthful bravado, the fear in their voices came through.

At that point, we had no idea how wide reaching these attacks were going to be. Were we at war?

As the day continued, we learned of an attack on the Pentagon and that another plane had been headed toward Washington, but never arrived.

I had the same concerns the students confided, but I did my best not to offer any statements or do anything that might betray the fears I had.

Two classrooms were located in my trailer, with Chris Rakestraw's fourth grade class on the other side. His class did not have a television, so for a while, the elementary students sat on the floor in my classroom and watched.

During the times KODE broke in for its local coverage, the fourth graders participated in the discussions and asked intelligent questions.

One thing I noticed during the moments the younger children were with us was that my seventh and eighth graders were doing their best to reassure them everything was going to be all right.

I did not find out until later that the Diamond elementary principal had told her teachers not to let the students watch the television coverage. She was concerned they would not be able to handle it.

The message never reached Mr. Rakestraw in the trailer.

From what I saw, the fourth graders handled it well.

Twenty years later, the memories of that day remain vivid in my mind. It launched a time when Americans of all political persuasions pulled together because our nation had been attacked.

Those days seem more like a fantasy in 2022. 

The next few years, on each anniversary of 9-11, I assigned my students to write a short paper offering their memories of that day.

Toward the end of my teaching career, it reached a point where my students were barely alive when the Twin Towers fell and had no memories of that day.

To today's students, the events of 9-11 are as distant a memory as the events of World War II were to my generation.

Classroom teachers helped students across America deal with 9-11 and its aftermath. We all need to play a part in making sure that day and the lessons we learned are never forgotten.