3/2/2024 0 Comments 9 11 in memory pictures2001, was teaching alongside her mentor in Cambridge, Massachusetts when the news broke. McDonel is retired and lives in Rosharon, Texas.ĭebbie Castellani, seen here c. We didn’t understand how radically our day was changing. We had finished our lesson, so I turned on CNN, thinking this would be part of the current events we covered in class that week. Our community had many pilots and others who may have been flying. I asked my students if anyone had a parent that was flying on a plane that morning. ![]() Only then did she tell me that a commercial plane had struck the World Trade Center. She asked me where my husband, a FedEx pilot, was that morning. Paula McDonel was teaching a World Geography class at Collierville High School in Collierville, Tennessee, when a colleague, looking somber, entered her classroom. These are their words, edited for length and clarity. With the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, Chalkbeat asked those in school on that day to share what they remember and what they think K-12 students growing up today should know about the generation-defining terror attacks. Others saw the attacks as having the opposite effect, citing the rise in Islamophobia, and long, costly, and polarizing wars that are only now ending. There were harrowing evacuations, long walks home, and eerily silent subway rides.Īs for the aftermath of 9/11, some teachers and students recalled with nostalgia how Americans came together, and they wondered if such shows of unity would be possible today. New York City educators did their best to provide students a steady hand even as some feared for loved ones who worked in the towers, or struggled to get through to friends and family on jammed phone lines. 124, a few blocks away, another teacher watched as crowds covered in ash walked toward Brooklyn. 1, in Lower Manhattan, one teacher remembers another lowering the shades so kindergartners wouldn’t see the burning towers out the window. In New York City, things were even more dramatic - the day’s horrific events were playing out nearby. ![]() (Eric Draper / The White House / Getty Images) Bush (center) makes a telephone call as White House Director of Communications Dan Bartlett points to video footage of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center from Emma Booker Elementary School on Septemin Sarasota, Florida. Then, one by one, students were called out of class as parents arrived early to bring them home. Across the country that day, lesson plans were futile. Teachers and students watched the news on boxy TVs strapped to rolling carts that moved between classrooms. The world was still largely without smartphones or social media. News back then moved slowly by today’s standards. Some said it was the reaction of the adults around them, rather than the images of burning buildings and pulverized steel, that conveyed the life-changing nature of the attacks. Students remember pained looks on their teachers’ faces. ![]() Bush was in the classroom, too - reading with young Florida students until his chief of staff whispered in his ear: “America is under attack.”Īcross the country that morning, there were hushed conversations among teachers and attempts to explain to students what was happening - or shield them from it. Millions of American children were in classrooms on the morning of September 11, 2001, when hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was the beginning of the school day at the beginning of the school year at the beginning of the millennium. ![]() Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S. First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education.
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