From the teacher's point of view.
"Good morning, class", I told my 4th grade students as they all filed into their desks, chatting to one another about things I could only dream of having the imagination to come up with anymore. "Pull out your Geography books on turn to chapter 5." As the class all turned to one of my favorite chapters, their pages filled with bright pictures of the New York skyline. Today they were going to learn about New York. I told them all to read silently to themselves. As I was awaiting for there curious hands to raise, I sat at my desk and checked my email. As I was at my desk my world rocked. I saw breaking news on my emails homepage stating that the Twin Towers had been hit. "Oh. My. Gosh." I couldn't believe what I had just taken in. I visited those towers during Spring break of my Freshman year in college. Those towers were landmarks of America that signified such prestigious power. As I looked at the image of the falling towers on my computer screen, I looked up at my class room and all of their books filled with more joyous pictures of what used to be. My students were engaging in their readings to only read what in the next edition of the book, would be inaccurate information. The next edition of this text book will not include statistics or images of the Twin Towers and how they fulfill the perfect image of the Big Apple's notorious skyline. These books would instead, be filled with images of devastation, horror, and accounts of innocent lives lost. When I came to school this morning, I had a smile on my face, now my eyes are filled with tears as I think of the lives lost in this tragedy. "What am I going to tell my students?" I thought to myself how hard it would be to explain the importance of these buildings to the apathetic children. They wouldn't be able to conceptualize why this is so upsetting for me or for their parents. They wont realize why the images of two buildings falling like Jenja squares are replacing their cartoons tonight, or the next few weeks. "Why right now? I've got to pull my self together for my students", as I was thinking of a way to present this news to my students, I couldn't hold back the tears. My students were so baffled by my expression of emotion they didn't know how to react. Some held themselves back, trying to act like they didn't notice an adult crying. Others, more sensitive, brought me over the box of Kleenex their parent most likely donated. "Something very bad just happened to very innocent people..." was all I could make out before school was dismissed early that September day.
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