Where Was I on September 11, 2001?

After reading this wonderful post by my dear Invisipeep, Nancy, I wanted to share my reflection on 9/11.

I was in my classroom with my multiage class: 4th and 5th graders. I didn't have an aide to share the news with me, but a fellow teacher with the first special came and told me about the first plane and then the second. We continued to update each other as the morning went on. Whoever had special would drop off their students and take on the role of news reporter for the school.

We had few TVs in our building and no cable connection, and that day our Internet connection was spotty at best so I really had no idea exactly how bad things really were. We were asked to close the windows, which automatically made my kids suspicious that something was going on because I ALWAYS had my windows open on nice days. I sat down with them in a class meeting (one of my clearest memories was of Tommy sitting on his knees looking at me) to tell the kids that something was happening that their parents would explain to them at home, but they were safe and we were going to continue with our day until our early dismissal.

Parents started arriving early to pick up their children. Many of my coworkers said it reminded them of the day when Three Mile Island had its incident, and our area was evacuated. A friend and I came to my place after our early dismissal, and I finally got to see the pictures and the footage of everything that had happened.

Because we were cut off from everything and so focused on the kids, my number one memory of that day is not my first tv footage or anything like that. My most vivid memory of that day is the brilliant BLUE sky.... the brilliant BLUE and EMPTY sky. We're on the flight path to our local airport with planes flying by all the time. That day, nothing... except brilliant blue sky and 25 kids to keep my mind off of things until we got home.

As a PS to this post, one of those kids is now a grown-up friend on FB. Today he posted to me that he will always remember that he was playing chess in my classroom that morning. How crazy is that??