20 years later: From the perspective of teachers
- Brett Hiner: A Work in Progress
- September 7, 2021
- 922
Educators are paid to have the answers. Not in every subject area or with every evolving curricular map, but within a specialty area, students ask … teachers respond. Sometimes those answers are finite, and sometimes they lead to the beauty of a reciprocal process that often makes teaching the best gig on the planet. That is until words/answers are too difficult to come by or too painful to express.
Twenty years after the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, what still resonates with me most about working at Wooster High School that day has as much to do with the days that followed as watching the events unfold on our classroom television. That is until the principal came over the PA system ordering teachers to turn their televisions off for the remainder of the day.
On Wednesday morning, Sept. 12, never have I walked into the building less prepared for what was to come, with no answers to the questions I assumed would be asked or a real sense for what students might be thinking or experiencing or feeling. It was a day, as were the many to follow, of uncertainty, and that is not a very comfortable world in which to live when students need us to be more certain than not.
For whatever reason, I remember Jordan Gliem, a student in my English I class, asking me if I thought we were going to go to war. Reflecting on President Bush’s address from the Oval Office the night before, I paraphrased the part of his speech when he talked about there not being a distinction between those who attacked us and the nations that may harbor them. That sounded to me like a “yes,” but I did not feel it would do any good or offer any comfort to speculate. “War” is a heavy word that must be used cautiously, so I responded to the student in the simplest way I knew: “I just don’t know.”
Education often puts us in situations that are distinctly unique to the profession, and in this case, it meant we were going to need to show our vulnerabilities right along with the thousand-plus 13- to 18-year-olds who share our home.
It was a vulnerability that was not unique to me or my classroom.
“(Sept. 12) was awful. I remember not wanting to leave my family to come to work. The look on the kids’ faces said it all,” Spanish teacher Miriam Stokes said. “No one knew what to say to each other. Kids and adults were crying.”
“I remember hoping in the days that followed that somehow people would have survived the buildings collapsing and would be rescued,” special education teacher Paul White said. “At this point, all we really wanted was the hope that people would be saved. That’s why I spent a lot of time watching CNN, late at night after the boys were in bed.”
After the emotionally draining days at work, most simply wanted to be around their families.
“For comfort, I wanted to be in the presence of my husband’s parents that evening. My father-in-law had served in Europe during WWII, and I knew he would have perspective and bring comfort,” family and consumer science teacher Marlene Boyer said.
She also recalls, in an attempt to help soothe the family, doing one of the many life skills she does best, both at home and in her classroom: making brownies. “They were a complete flop,” Boyer said. “In my distracted state of mind, I must have left something out of the recipe” — a recipe she said she had made a hundred times.
Pregnant with her third child, Spanish teacher Chris Matthew recalls the contrast between the life and hope she was carrying with the images she was seeing on television. “Seeing all of the pictures on the chain-link fence of all the missing people who were in the towers was so awful, and the loss of human life was so huge and terrible — images that will stay with me for the rest of my life,” she said.
Making sense of the day is still difficult for some.
“I tell my students every year that it is tough to convey what the events that transpired meant to our country. I guess I feel in the classroom the same thing that people that lived during Pearl Harbor felt … words will never do justice to the gravity of the event,” history teacher Mike Sullivan said.
Amidst the uncertainty and confusion, what also became abundantly clear as the days and weeks and months wore on, through discussions with students and colleagues, is we had awakened in a world that was drastically different than pre-9/11, and that feeling began to envelope the entire building.
But as scary and as tragic as that realization may have been, there also was a growing acceptance of togetherness that was assuredly felt within all occupational buildings, offices, businesses and homes: a community.
Twenty years later, I like to think that for all the questions I failed to answer in the days after 9/11, that students who may now be saying, “I was in Mr. Hiner’s room when I heard … ” remember that the one blessing of 9/11 may very well be an educator’s most important lesson: School communities work best when we seek understanding to the complex questions together.
Next week:20 years later from the perspective of students.
Brett Hiner is in his 25th year of teaching English/language arts at Wooster High School, where he also serves as the yearbook advisor and Drama Club advisor/director. If he’s not at work or doing something work related, he is typically annoying his children and/or wife. If he is not annoying his children and/or wife, he is probably whistling a show tune, curled up with a good book or watching the Tribe. These are three of the many reasons his children and wife find him annoying. He can be emailed at workinprogressWWN@gmail.com.