As a history teacher, I appreciate how seriously you take today and that you understand the importance of our children knowing about it. They can't possibly fathom what it was like, and I hope they never will. But, we can at least guide them farther down the path of knowing what it was like.
Today our principal said on the announcements that we were "celebrating the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks."
There's nothing to fucking celebrate. Maybe it was an honest slip of the tongue, but he's never emphasized the anniversary.
I always share my experience with my students. That was only my second day of class my freshman year of college. I started at Seton Hall, before transferring.
Being that close to NYC, you can imagine what it was like watching the towers fall surrounded by hundreds of people that had no idea if their loved ones were alive or dead.
Never forget.
The biggest thing I try and emphasize to my staff is to make it as personal as you’re able. It was personal to all of us who remember and lived it. I’ve never not had a kid just be absolutely enraptured when replaying the events of that day.
You remember the craziest things, you know? The minutia. I remember my mom making a baked ziti pasta that we could eat quickly before we went to Mass at 7:00 that night.
I remember how eerie it was to see the stained glass—so bright and vibrant on Sunday mornings—be so dark and ominous without the sun behind it.
I remember how important our first 8th grade football game felt that day, all of us in our blue home jerseys ready for that night and then immediately realizing that football really didn’t mean shit.
I remember being in class with a teacher I absolutely loathed—I mean one of my least favorite teachers—and I’ll never forget seeing her shed actual tears as she told us what was going on as she turned on the tv. I always felt a lot differently about her after that. It totally humanized her in my eyes.
I remember being terrified for my uncles who lived in NYC at the time. They both were out of ground zero that day, luckily. But one of them had a medical practice near Washington Square Park (he happened to be at another clinic in Connecticut that day) and the other owned a club further toward Times Square. At 13 and being from Indiana you don’t realize how big NYC is until you actually visit. I just kept picturing them at ground zero being caught up in the carnage.
I’ll never forget.