#memorablemomentsineducation #11:
On September 11, 2001, I was teaching at a school on a year-round schedule, which meant we were on break for most of the month. At 25, I still needed extra money (what you kids call a “side hustle” these days), so I would substitute teach on our off-track time. Early that morning, I’d taken a job to cover for a P.E. teacher at an elementary school in Castle Rock.
If I’d been at my usual work that morning, I would have never watched the morning news. This morning, however, marked a departure from the usual in so many ways. I watched the replay of the plane hitting the first tower on Good Morning America. I was horrified like everyone else, but it was still early enough that we didn’t realize this was more than just some freakish accident. When the second plane hit, I think I was still at home watching everything unfold on TV. Surprise turned into horror, and I knew I had to get in my car soon to get to work.
All the way to Castle Rock, I listened to news reports on the radio. Mostly, I remember radio personalities just trying to make sense of what was happening without causing too much panic. Commuters drove down the highway glued to their radios, looking across the lanes of traffic at each other as we sat stunned, alone in our cars, wondering what the hell was happening.
But when I got to this elementary school, I realized quickly that these small kids had no idea what had happened. They came to school like any other day, with their backpacks and smiles on, ready to play. This is the only time in my career I’ve been a P.E. teacher, and I learned more about classroom management in that 7 hours than in any class I ever took on the subject. Kindergartners cannot magically form a circle just because you say the word “circle” to them. If you happen to let one kid raise her hand and share that it’s going to be her mom’s birthday in ten days, you will inevitably have to let all the kids share their birth dates and those of their pets, siblings, and random cousins. Lessons I carry with me always.
I didn’t have a smartphone, I didn’t know any of the teachers at the school, and I couldn’t talk to the kids about all the thoughts and feelings running through my head while they played “capture the flag” or attempted to coordinate their bodies into a jumping jack. In between classes of students, I tried to turn on the radio in the teacher’s office and quickly eat up any tidbits of what was happening like a teacher on a 15-minute lunch break, but I didn’t learn much.
It would still be hours before I learned about the towers collapsing, the Pentagon, or United 93 crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. For the moment, I had no choice but to delight in the joy of little kids getting a brief respite from all the book learning and the math facting. If I were going to choose a way to spend that awful day, I could do much worse than to hang out with young children and pretend for a while longer that everything was going to be okay.