With the death of Osama bin Laden Sunday, there has been lots of talk of that day almost ten years ago where that awful name was forever thrust into our collective memory, September 11, 2011.
That day, I was teaching 7th graders at John T. Magee Middle School in Round Lake, Illinois. After first period, while I was doing hall duty, a fellow teacher came up to me and told me that planes had flown into the Twin Towers in New York City.
I immediately threw out all my lesson plans and this became the topic for the rest of the day. We located New York City, Washington, DC, and central Pennsylvania along with the Middle East. We looked up items in the history book about the Middle East.
We had horrible TV reception at Magee. In these days before the school's cable hookup, I tried, but finally gave up. We had just gotten computers, but I couldn't get online. We settled for listening to the radio.
The kids also wrote down an account of their experiences that day.
I taught for five more years after that and every class had to write a report on what they remembered from the day.
Sadly, today's 7th graders were too young at the time to remember anything about it.
Just Some Memories. --Cooter
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