On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was teaching my third graders when my classroom phone rang around 9:00 AM.
It was my friend calling to tell me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. She said that it was likely a commuter plane, but if I had some free time, I might want to turn on the news.
“All the networks are covering the story,” she said.
In September of 2001, I did not own a cell phone. No one really did. Though the internet was up and running, it was not nearly as ubiquitous or robust as it is today.
My friend knew that in those days, once a teacher entered a school, they were often encased in a protective bubble, unaware of outside events until the school day ended.
No televisions, no radios, no phones, and little time for phone calls.
The outside world did not exist while we were teaching. As a result, friends would occasionally call me with breaking news, giving me a chance to step away at lunchtime to catch up on world events.
Usually those calls were about baseball trades, football injuries, and the occasional death of a celebrity.
This one was very different.
I hung up the phone and continued teaching, wondering how a pilot could accidentally fly into one of the largest buildings in the world.
“What an idiot,” I remembered whispering aloud as I returned to my lesson.
Ten minutes later she called back. “Another plane hit the second tower. It’s an attack.”
I hung up the phone and turned to my students, who were busy solving math problems. I had to smile and keep teaching them, knowing something terrible was happening outside the walls of our school. As I spoke about subtraction with regrouping, I tried to imagine what was happening in New York City.
At 9:30 AM, I dropped my students off for vocal music class, pulling their teacher aside and whispering, “Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center. It’s a terrorist attack.”
I headed to the principal’s office to see if he even knew the attacks were happening. The small television had been moved onto his desk, and he and several others were watching the events unfold. We watched the towers burn together in near silence.
A couple of minutes later, news came that the Pentagon had been hit. There was discussion that this might be the tip of the iceberg, the first in a long series of terrorist attacks. There was speculation that there could be more planes, many more planes, flying to many more targets around the country. We listened to news anchors report on the casualties and speculate on the numbers still awaiting to die in the towers.
Someone in the office said, “We are at war.”
Just before 10:00 AM, we watched the south tower fall. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I remember thinking that it looked as if the tower had been built of ash and bone. Several people were in the office at the time, and at least two let out quiet screams as the tower collapsed.
A minute after it fell, I left to pick up my students. I remember walking to the basement stairs, feeling saddled with momentous and awful information that I would not share with my kids.
Information that I never wanted to share with them.
I remember thinking that I would try to make this school day as normal and happy for them as possible, knowing that the world was changing before our eyes. I remember envying them, too, thinking about how fortunate they were to have one more day of peace and normalcy than the rest of us. That day, I decided to build a protective cocoon around my kids, making sure whatever we did was normal and fun and spirited and full of laughter. I wanted this last day for them to be the best it could possibly be.
Parents began picking up their children as news spread, but only a few left my class early. Most of us remained together, learning and laughing as buildings burned and people died. As their parents took them by the hand and led them out the classroom door, I felt sorry for them, knowing that they were returning to the real world where planes flew into buildings and mighty towers collapsed onto city streets.
I remember thinking that nothing would ever be the same for them. The safety and security that had infused my childhood would no longer exist for them. Their country had been attacked. Civilians had been killed, and buildings had been knocked down by our enemies. Our borders would never feel quite as secure as they once had.
I wondered if Americans felt the same following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Except Pearl Harbor was so far away, and it was a military base.
This was happening in New York City. Commercial airplanes had been turned into weapons. They had destroyed civilian targets.
It felt as if it could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time now.
In many ways, the world did not change as much as I had feared, at least for my students.
America went to war, terrorists continued to threaten our safety, and civil liberties eroded under the threat of more attacks. It’s a very different world today, but my students remained as happy and as enthusiastic about the future as ever.
Most of the students whom I taught for the next 25 years were born after 2001 and viewed 9/11 as a history lesson:
Something terrible and tragic that happened before their time. Something almost impossible to imagine. Something blessedly distant from the world they live in today.
While the ramifications of the attacks will continue to impact their lives for years to come, their childhoods in most ways remained blissfully intact.
Like the kids whom I was teaching on the morning of September 11, 2001, most of my students saw their future as full of hope and promise.
I loved them for it.
