Monday, September 12, 2011

Thoughts on 9/11

It is hard to believe that the events of 9/11 transpired ten years ago. I think we were all shaken, outraged, & numbed by the events of September 11th. I'll never forget where I was when I heard the news: I was in a principal's meeting in HEB, & I'll always remember the look of horror, shock, & disbelief on the faces of the other principals in my group as we learned what had happened.

Our world has never been the same since. Our thoughts were with all of the victims who perished in planes, buildings, & on the ground & all of their families who struggled to come to terms with what happened after such a devastating senseless assault. I remember thinking that certainly many of our international friends cope with terrorism every day of their lives as just another part of their reality. With it striking so close to home, perhaps America will better understand what our friends live through daily. Perhaps this tragic event will galvanize the global community & provide the motiviation for swift & decisive cooperative effort to restore some sense of humanity & provide the motivation for swift & decisive cooperative effort to restore some sense of humanity to the structure of our ever increasingly desensitized world.

Our hearts & prayers went out to the families missing a parent, girlfriends who lost fiances, & parents missing a child who had just started a promising career. The countless stories were heartbreaking. I couldn't understand such atrocities & wondered what it must be like from a child's perspective.

In the days following the attack we had business as usual at school. The children were fine - excited, curious, only a bit frightened & only at times - from what I could tell. I think it was the adults on campus who were most fragile. It was the adults who better understood than the 10 year olds the staggering implications of what we were witnessing.

Our teachers continued in their profession & made their country proud. Learning continued, & the teachers did a wonderful job of balancing normalcy with the recognition that the world had changed & that children needed to process & learn emotions along with mathematics. We were a different place than we were, & yet we were the same as ever as well. There was a resiliency from the American people I had never witnessed before.

Our kids are too young, too precious, to be thoroughly soiled with terror. The mind of a child is an incredible, resilient thing. It will file the lessons of this page in history where they will mold a different better adult than they would become without this calamity. The heart & soul of a child is precious, & we can only hope & pray that something good will come out of that unspeakable tragedy.

Many of the kids we teach today weren't even born when those events unfolded. But it is important that they learn about that part of our history. May our country never have to endure this kind of terror again!

-Mr. Mac