9/11 Stories
Anon 19
This attack has affected me I think more then others. I am a schoolteacher for the city of New York. My windows face (or use to face), the world trade center. When you walk into my classroom you are facing the windows.
We walked in at 8:48 and I remember that because the second bell had just rang. So as we were walking in you could see all the smoke coming from the world trade center. But thank god none of my kids really noticed including myself at first.
About 5 minutes into the school day one of the teachers walk in and tell me to look out of the window that the world trade center had been hit by a plane. So I casually looked out of the window as to not alarm the students, but they are very observant, I teach 6th grade by the way. They look out of the window and see what was going on. They all rushed to the window and are just watching in a “I don’t know,” because to tell you the truth I really didn’t know.
Now we are watching both towers on fire and my concerns are growing and I am trying not to show any concern to the students, and by the way I have 38 students. God bless the New York City board of Education. We are just watching in amazement and no one at this point is really saying a word, but I noticed the north tower started to lean a little bit and as that went through my head it started to collapse. It looked like it was in slow motion. My students gasped. I really mean gasped I have never heard a big collective gasp like that in my life.
At that point all you saw was smoke and a lot of smoke you almost couldn’t see the south tower. Inside my concerns are now starting to start to panic because of my mother and friends that I know are there. I really had to keep myself under control because of these students if they see me lose it then they will panic as well, so I am trying my hardest. You just never know about these things so better to be safe than sorry.
After my students were safe I asked one of the other teachers to please watch my students. All of the 6th grade teachers went upstairs to the main office to use the phone. One of my coworkers had a husband that worked there and the other ones husband was a police officer deployed to that area. I was so nervous that I couldn’t even dial the phone.
When I finally got through to her office they had told me that she did go in for her meeting there and they hadn’t heard from her. I couldn’t get through to my friends. I then turned into a bigger mess.
I went downstairs back to my students and I had to be strong. Other teachers knew what I was going through. They just gave me hugs and told me it would be OK. I was just pacing and pacing till I heard an announcement for me to go to the main office. My heart raced it could be good news or bad news.
So I get up am going to my mother’s house and I am spending the whole weekend with her. As for my friends they are all OK except for 3. One is a police officer, and two work for an investment firm on the 104th floor. All of my coworkers families are OK.
As for my students, 5 of the kids parents are OK but 2 of my students haven’t returned to school yet so I think they are still missing. Please pray for everyone that is still missing.