Day 24 - A Necessary, Appropriate Break in the Action

Today is another day that should "live in infamy." I was teaching a class of 8th graders in my first period Computer Applications class, when an announcement from our principal came on. He said something like,

Pardon this interruption teachers and students, but the news is reporting a terrible accident (he did say accident at this point) in New York City. One of the Trade Center towers has been hit by a plane. We do not want to alarm anyone, but this is something about which we need to be sensitive.

His reason for this announcement was twofold - 1) Several of our Social Studies teachers used TV newscasts as current event starters in their classes and 2) one of the teachers with whom we worked had a brother who worked on the 93rd floor of one of the buildings. The time of the announcement was about 9:00 -- after the first plane hit, but before the second plane arrived.

I turned on the television and my class watched the coverage. We watched live as a second plane crashed into the second tower. My 2nd period class watched as the first towers collapsed.



Then another announcement

Teachers, if you are still watching the television, please turn off your sets. One of our teachers has just left the building because she cannot get in touch with her brother, who reported to work early today. He worked in the tower that has collapsed. We will now conduct a moment of silence, perhaps much more than a moment. We do not know anything for sure at this point. But for some of you prayer may be what you are led to do at this time. For the rest of you, respecting the families, and our DMS family, is not only appreciated, it is the right thing to do.

Our teacher's brother was in the building that day. No identifying remains have ever been found. I do not mention her name at this time, because I have not asked her permission to do so.

Move ahead seven years...

I asked my students this week if they knew the significance of 9/11 and the response was, "That's who you call when you are in trouble." I said that is correct, but I mean the date - September 11.

Only a handful of the 132 students present that day knew about what occurred. They were only 6 or 7 years old, and considered too young to handle the issues of the day. I'll reserve my opinion of that line of thinking for now.

So today, we will be watching a video from Discovery Education (unitedstreaming.com download) called The Flight That Fought Back - Flight 93. It is done very well. It is a documentary with interviews from family members, emergency operators, airline personnel, and others.

I hope my students will understand the significance of this day. My dad's life changed because of the original "day that lived in infamy." He dropped out of school, joined the Navy and served his country. My mom spoke to me about the day JFK was assassinated, as she was a switchboard operator who heard about the news through a phone call to the local newspaper. I was in a classroom with kids in the 8th grade (my younger son's class and friends).

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The content of Room 755 is the interpretation of the Georgia State Standards for 7th grade Social Studies, and how we seek to address these standards in one classroom, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the school system in which I work. This work (unless expressly stated) are licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.