It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, sunny and warm, when I reached my faculty office at 7:45 to complete preparations for my first lecture of the new semester. As always, I was excited for a new year of teaching: who would my students be, how would they surprise and inform me, how would my teaching evolve as I learned their personalities and levels of engagement. Having introduced the course and myself to the class at our first meeting a few days earlier, I felt ready for my initial lecture at 9:30 that morning.
It was September 11, 2001, and I was in Boston. Less than five miles away,
planes were leaving Boston Logan International Airport on their routine schedules, many of them heading as usual to New York City. As they lifted off the runway, these planes would fly low over my son’s new school, where he was in his first week as a high school freshman.
Classical music played on the radio as I focused on reviewing and making small changes to my lecture notes. I became only vaguely aware at some point that the music had stopped, and that some news–of a crash or an explosion somewhere?–was being reported. I worked on. Continue reading ““Are we safe here?” Remembering 9/11 in a College Classroom”
