Never Forget...So You Can Teach Them.

On the ninth anniversary of September 11th, I was teaching an AP Language course.  Just a few days into the school year, we were exploring why people write - to persuade, to entertain, to explain.  On the 9-11 anniversary,  I chose to focus on writing to remember.  We read excerpts from speeches given after other tragedies, the Challenger explosion, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Columbine massacre, to see how people used language to delicately balance the feeling of loss with that of hope.  We also read pieces from September 11th.  

During our discussion I shared with my students that the language that moved me most deeply during the weeks following the event were the messages left on the missing persons posters that lined New York City blocks.  I told them about standing in front of a large Penn Station wall covered with these posters that October.  I saw two familiar faces there.  The handsome football player who was the bartender at a local bar when I was in college and a photo of my sorority sister who had graduated  a few years before me.  By the time I saw their posters and the hundreds of others, we knew they were gone.  But the desperate words on these posters haunted me for months.  

"Please help me find my son!"  

"Looking for my husband.  We are expecting our first child any day.  We need him home!'  

"Missing my gorgeous daughter.  Worked in Tower 1.  Brown, curly hair.  Brown eyes.  Bright smile."

"Have you seen my Daddy?"

My students stared at me, unable to comprehend the idea of hundreds of missing persons posters taped all over New York City.  They were only 8 years old when the towers fell.  They had seen images of the exploding planes, the crumbling towers, the charging fireman, and the billowing flags.  But they had never seen a picture of the image that moved me the most. Paper after paper lining the walls of Manhattan, each one representing one life lost and an entire family's suffering.  

So the next day, I shared pictures of these walls with them.  They viewed each one quietly, carefully.  Then they wrote about what they saw and what they remembered.  

I will never forget.  I hope my students won't either.