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Thoughts About 9/11
How Schools Might Approach Paying Tribute
As we approach the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC, thoughts vary on what to do, how much to do, and what tenor a commemoration might best have. This link is to Guidelines for 9/11 Commemoration. I hope it will be helpful for those who may not have finished planning. Too, some may be finding it a challenge to meet the wide range of needs and resistance that people may have. Included are lots of examples, intended more for consideration than to be followed as written. A jumping-off place. Food for thought.
I'm also very interested in hearing the kinds of things you ultimately decide to do, especially those of you who come up with plans enough ahead of time that I can post them as ideas for others. If you send ideas, I will try to post many of them to my blog. Please send them directly to my email address at <clovre@earthink.net> with the subject line "9/11 Anniversary Idea" so I get to it quickly.
In the process of putting thoughts together, I searched my computer for one specific activity that I used when in New York and New Jersey in the first two years after the attacks. One of them outlined agendas and the process of assemblies and staff meetings early on, and I decided to upload one of them for those interested in that as well. This link will take you to "New Jersey After 9/11" of my time there.
For all of us, my hope would be that we find greater wisdom because of the journey before us as this day approaches. For all of you who courageously evacuated children in the midst of the chaos, still I remember your faces from the workshops we held at District 2; still I remember so many of your stories; still I have such heart for all you did and all you've faced since then. Even now as I write these words, tears hasten to my eyes as my soul touches back into those moments in your relocation sites where you were doubled-up classrooms and buildings with others, in lunch rooms as we took a short break, on street corners as we left at the end of school days, and with some of you, at dinner where we'd share reflective moments. Although I will never be one of you - I wasn't there on that day - you are absolutely "my people" and New York is my second home. Not nearly as much as yours, but my life, too, was irrevocably changed by the two years I spent with you after 9/11. Still, I wouldn't give up the close and lasting friendships nor the bittersweet memories of the early days of "the recovering." I still think of it that way. That it is "the recovering" that continues - it is a verb - in that it isn't ever entirely finished enough to become a noun.
I don't think it is a miracle that all of the children in New York City schools were evacuated to safety on 9/11 without any deaths or injuries... I think it is a tribute to great courage and unbounded tenacity in the face of the unthinkable. It is a statement about the inner strength of teachers, administrators, secretaries, paraprofessionals and everyone else in those buildings. Not one teacher ran for his or her own safety. In the very real meaning of these words, no child was left behind that day. Not one. This, in the midst of all the rest of it, this is something to which we should all pay tribute!
Cheri |
