Author Terry Lee Marzell recounts her classroom experience in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Photo credit: Terry Lee Marzell

That Tuesday started out like just about any other weekday in just about any other month in just about any other year of my teaching career. I groaned when the alarm clock sounded off; nevertheless, I forced my eyes open, peeled myself out of bed, and stumbled to the bathroom sink to brush my teeth. Like just about any other night in my teaching career, I’d been up late grading papers, I hadn’t slept well, and even though I’d slept, I was exhausted.

As I was running cold water through my toothbrush, my level-headed and unflappable husband, who typically watches the morning news while he dresses for work, called me into the next room. “Come look at this,” he said in an even tone. “Something’s going on in New York.”

The North Tower of the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. Side by side we silently watched the continuous repetition of the explosive impact and the resulting inferno on the screen. We were still standing there when, to our horror, the South Tower was hit by a second plane. The aircraft sliced into the concrete and steel structure like a knife cutting butter, igniting a second conflagration. Shocked news commentators began to speculate the crashes were not accidental.

Half an hour later I was driving my customary route through the Chino dairy preserve on my way to school. My ears were superglued to updates announced through the car radio. That’s how I heard that the South Tower, the second building to be struck, had collapsed.

Once I arrived at the campus, I grabbed the contents of my mailbox and hustled to the teachers’ lounge, where I found a hushed group of co-workers clustered around the television mounted on the wall. My eyes skimmed the words “Special people work here” stenciled on the wall in black letters on a red background. I glanced back to the “breaking news” on the TV screen. Before the bell signaled the start of first period, we learned the North Tower, too, had collapsed, causing each of the 70-odd floors below the point of impact to pancake, until all that was left of what was once one of the tallest buildings in the world was reduced to a dusty heap of smoldering concrete and twisted steel. Disbelief and distress was evident in the face, the humped shoulders, the posture of every person in the room.

I taught my first period Sophomore Language Arts class that morning on automatic pilot. I didn’t mention anything about what I had seen or what I knew about the events that had already occurred that day. I didn’t want to upset my kids. But I remember thinking that many of my colleagues, particularly those in the Social Studies Department, use news reports on television as a springboard for class discussions about current events. So it was no surprise that by the time my second period class arrived, many of my students were already aware. They knew our country was under attack. And they were distraught.

Frankly, when distressing things like this happen, my instinct is to stubbornly forge ahead with the plan or the routine. I wait until the work day is over and I am at home to deal with my reactions and feelings. But kids aren’t like that. They want to know what’s happening, and they want to deal with it, NOW. No matter what the teacher wants, the students will demand to know what’s going on, they ask questions, they react, and no matter how hard you try to keep them to the lesson, they insistently pull the conversation back to the topic. And on this particular day, they were begging to be reassured that everything was going to be all right. I couldn’t just forge ahead without first addressing their concerns.

Having said that, I would also like to say that I don’t believe it’s beneficial for students to go from classroom to classroom all day, watching alarming news reports on television, and getting more and more upset as the day progresses. But on this day, I myself felt a driving need to know what was happening, so I agreed to turn on the television, just for a few minutes.

By this time, hijackings were confirmed. Reports of the fiery plane crash into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, were being described. A fourth hijacked plane crashed in an empty field in rural Pennsylvania. Legislators were evacuated from the White House and the US Capitol, accompanied by images of men in business suits and women in professional ensembles and heels scrambling down the steps of the stately historic building. All over the country, airline flights were immediately cancelled to prevent further hijackings. And the images of the collapsed structures, the once imposing buildings disintegrated into a pile of rubble amidst a huge billowing cloud of choking dust, were apocalyptic.

Holy mackerel, I thought, no wonder the kids were walking buckets of anxiety.

I turned the television off and took a deep breath. I faced the kids and encouraged them to verbalize their thoughts and reactions. They were terrified. I mean, really terrified. Their biggest fear, it was clear, was that at any moment the next hijacked plane would crash right on top of them. Right there, at school.

I took another deep breath. “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” I said finally, in the most soothing voice I could muster. “These hijackings appear to be taking place on the East Coast, in big cities with tall buildings, or at important military buildings. We’re on the West Coast, Corona is a small town a good distance away from Los Angeles, and we don’t have any tall buildings,” I reasoned earnestly. “I think we’re safe here.”

I could see the kids digesting and accepting this logic. I could feel the tension loosening. With about 15 minutes left in the period, I asked them to write whatever else they felt needed to be said about the attacks. This was important because not everybody feels safe sharing out loud, but everybody needs an opportunity to process and express.

I had to go through this three more times that day. Each period, I had to hold myself together, no matter what I felt personally, no matter what happened, until at last I was free to go home and I could allow myself to fall apart. As soon as I hit the door, I flung myself into my husband’s arms, and the two of us expressed our own fears and sought our own reassurances.

In retrospect, I know that I am just one of, literally, millions of teachers all over the country who had to abandon a carefully-constructed lesson plan that day to conduct impromptu on-the-spot counseling for panicky kids. Nor was that the only traumatic occasion in our nation’s history when a day in the life of a teacher required this. Helping our kids understand, cope, and endure is part of the job.