On 9/11, I was going about my daily routine as a middle school teacher in a rowdy inner-city school about 12 miles outside of New York. It was second period and a few calls over the intercom asked that students be sent to the office for dismissal, nothing unusual at first. Then around 11:00 we were heading to the computer class and an administrator told me we couldn’t let the kids use the computers because there was some disturbing news that they didn’t want the kids to see. I still didn’t know anything, so I took the kids to the art room instead. The intercom kept calling kids to the office and everyone asked why they were calling other kids to go home.
I started to wonder what was happening. At lunch-time I went to the teacher’s room that was next to the office, there were a lot of parents there picking up their kids. I asked one parent, a black Muslim, what was going on and he said, “two planes hit the World Trade Center.” I was in shock. I knew that a lot of the kids’ parents worked in New York, but I also started to worry about my own two kids that were in school. I called my husband and he said he had been trying to reach me and asked if I could come home. I knew I couldn’t leave the school until all the kids had been picked up. He said it was best if our kids stayed at school.
After lunch, the principal called everyone in the school to gather in the main hallway. We had the kids make a big circle and she told them as calmly as possible what had happened. Some were crying, some were still oblivious, joking around with their friends. She let them know that this was a sad day and we didn’t know all the details, but we would stay there until their parents could come. One kid said his mom worked at the World Trade Center. We let them know that if their parents worked in New York they were probably waiting for the train and not to worry too much. After that we went back to the art room and one cute little girl came up to me and hugged me and started crying.
We started working on art projects. In the days after that, we had a daily moment of silence and made hundreds of cards for the families that had lost their loved ones. I think art helped these kids to heal and to channel their feelings into something positive. Many of the cards couldn’t be sent because they showed planes crashing and people jumping. It was obvious that my students were old enough to grasp the horror of that day. It was hard to make sense of it and even harder to answer their probing questions. As a teacher I couldn’t understand the hate, or the anger that had caused 9/11, but I tried to keep my student’s world as sane as possible and I think art helped them to heal.