“By the donzerly light,” wrote one student. Another actually wrote, “José can you see?” Others butchered the lyrics in their own 8th grade way, thinking they knew the Star-“Spankled” Banner like they knew the latest lyrics to their favorite song.
The day was just like any other---near the beginning of school, past the getting-to-know each other stage, and already into a class novel. The book I chose to start our year was Nothing but the Truth by Avi, an interesting tale about a boy who embroils his school in a lawsuit regarding his response to the daily playing of the National Anthem. We had not started the novel, so, on that day to “prime the pump”, I asked the students to write the lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner. I quietly watched as my eighth-graders looked around the room, scratched out a few words, looked at the ceiling, sighed, and wrote some more.
A knock never preceded the door flying open, and a fellow colleague stood at the door saying, “Turn on the TV. Something horrible is happening.” In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have touched the TV because the visions my students and I saw at that moment and throughout the day have invaded our nightmares since that time. People leaping from the first building which was hit. Throngs of people running through the streets of New York City. Billowing, blinding, black smoke rising above the city. These were scenes we could only imagine from a movie. Yet, here we were, in Room 303 at Eldorado Middle School seeing horror brought about by hatred so deep-seated that thousands of innocent lives were lost. It was a day that brought us together, that made us notice what gifts we’d been given, that made us want to somehow spread love and not hate.
This was, and would forever be, 9/11.