I was driving to Mohave High School in Bullhead City, Arizona, and I remember the strange quiet on the radio. No music. Just talking, urgent and confused. It took me a moment to understand what I was hearing.

When I got to school, I went straight to the front office. That’s where I was standing when the second plane hit the tower. I just stood there, stunned, watching the smoke and the replay and trying to make sense of it.

We had televisions in every classroom, and that morning my students came in differently than usual — quiet, careful, already sensing that something had shifted. We watched together. No one said much at first. Then the questions started: Why would someone do this? How could this happen here, in our own country?

I made a decision early that day: my job wasn’t to explain it, or to guess at answers I didn’t have. It was to let them talk. So that’s what we did. We didn’t point fingers. We didn’t speculate. We just sat with it together, and let the kids say what they needed to say.

We didn’t open a single book that day. But I think we learned something anyway — about showing up for each other, about what it means for a country to grieve together, about carrying other people’s pain even from thousands of miles away. Our hearts were with the passengers, the crews, the firefighters, the families, and the city of New York.

I left that school at the end of the year and never got the chance to know how that day settled in my students’ memories. But I still think about them. I hope that the way we sat with it together — quietly, honestly, without easy answers — is something that stayed with them in a good way.

I know it’s stayed with me.

Alyson Krawchuk-Boschen

Palmerton

I was an elementary schoolteacher in a rural school in Illinois on Sept 11. I remember being in my classroom and getting ready for the day when the music teacher stopped in and asked how would it be possible for a plane to hit a building.

We walked to the library where there was a TV with cable and watched as the second plane hit. The teachers watching said nothing and even thinking about the day sends tears down my face.

The principal finally spoke and said with the age of our students, Kindergarten through 4th grade, he wanted us to hold off saying anything till the superintendent could be reached. Parents called and many came and took their children home.

The day is etched in my mind even though I was miles away. My mind went from how, to why, to what next.

The rest of that week we allowed children to ask questions and we did our best to explain what we knew, but it was the most difficult time of teaching.

Carol Schnaiter

Retired K-4 Science Educator

Kunkletown