Remember that day after the attacks? Most of us were still numb and in disbelief. The skies were quiet, the images were embedded in our minds, and many of us in the metro DC area were given a day off from work and school. As a country, we mourned, but we were united like no other time I could remember. As a certified member of Generation X, this was a new moment for Americans my age. We were too young to remember Vietnam vividly, heard stories from our grandparents about WWII, but for the most part we had never seen or experienced anything like 9/11. And then we were thrown into action, whether it was leading a classroom, a school, a battalion of firefighters, or a group of soldiers. I was born and raised on Long Island and that skyline was something I admittedly took for granted. I’ve lived in the DC area almost half my life and call it home now. In case you weren’t sure, these attacks hit me hard.

So I asked my sons (2^nd and 4^th graders) about what they knew about 9/11. It was a bold move for me, since the day brings back such raw emotions. You see, they weren’t even close to being born yet (’03 and ’05 birth years) and until this year I haven’t felt that we could talk about it with them.

At their elementary school, a whiteboard welcomes them daily with a message of hope, a quote, or an announcement from the office. Of course, yesterday there was a message about 9/11. So I asked them at dinner, “What do you know about September 11^th?”

My older boy jumped in immediately and talked about an acrostic poem that they wrote as a class. He remembered talking about the military a lot. He looked cautiously at my wife and me before getting into too many details to spare our 2^nd grader from the specifics. Understandably, the combined 1^st and 2^nd grade class he’s in didn’t talk about it at all. As our older son explained how planes flew into buildings, he didn’t know that they were passenger planes. “Like the planes we fly on?” he asked. As we talked, there were many questions that I anticipated that were difficult to discuss, even after 11 years. “Why would they do that? Is that why we’re at war? Where did the buildings go?”

We kept our answers short and factual. I read the 9/11 Memorial suggestions on how to talk to children about the event earlier in the day, and I did my best to follow those guidelines. When we talked about the fact that our country has been at war for their entire life and it all began as a result of 9/11, they were shocked. “So, is that longer than World War II?” “More than twice as long,” I answered.

I was a 7^th grade history teacher that day and my school is on the flight path for Dulles airport, so every day I watched planes arrive and depart out of the corner of my eye, perhaps even flight 77 that eventually made its way to the Pentagon. That day was like no other, as you’d imagine, and I tried to explain to the boys what it was like to be in a school. They were curious if the kids knew about what was happening and shocked to hear that we didn’t tell the students anything for a while, since everything was so confusing that morning. With so many parents who worked in DC, there was panic around us and our principal wanted to maintain a ‘business as usual’ approach to the best of our ability. Her thought was correct, and the safest place for those students to be was in school. My boys were fascinated to hear what it was like after that day with the skies being quiet (we live on the flight path to National airport, which was closed for weeks following), how people were generally nicer to each other in the grocery store, parking lots, and in our neighborhood.

Our conversation was the first time that I could describe a historical event and go through what it was like personally. It reminded me that so many students today have no memory of that day. The students I taught in 2001 are mostly out of college by now and the current high school seniors were just starting their school careers. I’d assume most of them were clueless about what was going on while they were in their first days of school. After posting a message last night on my Facebook status, one of my former students reminded me of what I told them on the first anniversary in 2002:

I remember sitting in your 7th grade History classroom on the first 9/11 anniversary. Some of us were asking if we were going to watch the 9/11 broadcasts on TV during class, since it was history after all. After explaining why we weren't going to do that, you urged us all to spend time with our families and friends after school that day, and celebrate life rather than gluing ourselves to the TV and watching the devastating recaps of the year before. I think of those words of wisdom every year now!

I had forgotten that detail, and it was a wonderful reminder to me how the comments you make on a daily basis in schools can be indelible for the students you work with. Throughout my years as a history teacher, I know that describing turning points in history is not like living through them, and my boys’ curiosity made it hard to follow the rule to keep things simple. Someday maybe I’ll get into more details—but for now we were happy to maintain their innocence from geopolitical events.