Wednesday, September 11, 2013

9/11 In My Classroom

On September 10 in my American Government/Current Events class, I presented a very effective lesson on 9/11. I made the day “come alive” for my students and the parents who were sitting in on the class. Not a dry eye in the room by the time I was done.

I personalized the lesson with details that my students will never read in history books: the days-long chirping of those cell phones at Ground Zero, the very small body parts, the pink mist in the air, the several hours I spent as I awaited word of the fate of one of my friends in the Pentagon (He, a wonderful man with several kids and a disabled wife, was called out of the building, out of the very room that was destroyed, a few minutes before the plane struck), the children who perished in the day care center at the Pentagon, tales of recovery personnel and what they went through in those weeks following 9/11, the anthrax attacks (the devil in the mail box), the many lost freedoms and the many resulting inconveniences, how this generation will never be as free as my generation, the travesty of the Flight 93 Memorial, and more — including the whitewash of Islam and my anger at today’s dhimmitude and political correctness.

I spoke without notes.

I spoke from the heart.

The last segment of my lesson plan consisted of playing Bruce Springsteen’s “You’re Missing” on the classroom's excellent sound system:

6 comments:

Mustang said...

You are an outstanding teacher, AOW … more than that, you are an exemplary American.

Pastorius said...

Thanks.

beakerkin said...

For many years running on that day bothered me. In reality 90% of the time unless you are a designated and trained first respond-er your job is to get out of their way.

It takes a long time to accept that.

Always On Watch said...

Beak,
Running from annihilation under those circumstances was the right thing to do!

beakerkin said...

Believe it or not the official training states that with rare exception.

My peers notice when we have crisis
situations I don't panic. In fact I made sure everyone was off the floor and came to the assembly area with a snack.

When we had to return to work there was a mad scramble. I was rested relaxed and fed, I was very much in control when others were reacting.

On 9-11 I learned if there is a calm patch grab a bite to eat because the next one may be quite a while.

Don't react take a breath think then act and make an effective solution worry about style points after you have reached safety.

At safety remain calm and think ahead not about what happened. It worked in Sandy too

LanceThruster said...

9/11 is the litmus test.

So many of the things that reverberate to today are based on the unwillingness to demand full, open and transparent investigations of the attack, the crime scene forensics, and the apparent response failures. Anyone not in lockstep with the coming “payback” was a traitor, and anyone questioning the official narrative was a nutter. That the people so readily dismissing the skeptics, did not heed to call themselves to demand what the commission itself determined; that a proper investigation was needed to uncover the truth.

Remember, the alternate explanation to deride conspiracy, was the supposedly comforting notion that incompetence, an unrelated type of criminality (the destruction of evidence), the desire to cover your butt, and a string of bad luck and/or remarkable coincidence, explained the seeming contradictions and that the right enemy had been targeted anyway, so no time to navel gaze as we needed to get our bloodbath up and running.

My recollection is somewhat shorter as to what I saw and what we lost. I live in So Cal and commute to downtown LA, and have for over 20+ years. For *exactly* a day and a half (the same amount of time the air stays smog free after a good rain), the normally selfish and inattentive motorists drove in manner virtually unseen before or since. Over that two day period, they actually showed noticeable consideration and no longer drove oblivious to those around them, not caring who they cut off or didn’t let in or honked at for going too slow, or not getting out of the way fast enough…they treated the other drivers as fellow Americans that were also possibly traumatized or numb and that the default position might be that they would appreciate a random act of kindness from a stranger who might just cut another person a break for no other reason than they thought the anonymous person could use one.

And then, as if it never happened in the first place, it was over. That was how long it took to revert back to type, and embrace dysfunction as normalcy.

And that’s how we got to where we are today.

There are some things in life that we can’t turn back the clock on, but tragically that is true even on those things we could turn back the clock on. We’re just not that smart or that caring, and I don’t think it’s overly pessimistic to say that we never will be.