A Reflection on September 11th

For my EDSE447 students, this particular post is not linked to any required or requested reflection for class.


September 11 -- my now husband's birthday.  He was 100 miles away working.  I had class and work in the office to do.  I needed to be in the office by 9:00 a.m.

Sitting in front of the television, eating a bowl of cereal, I watched the Today Show.  It had become my morning ritual before heading out on my 15-minute walk to campus for class and my job in the Texas Alliance for Geographic Education (TAGE).

And then, the first plane struck the World Trade Center.  My first thought was that the pilot must've had a heart attack or that the plane had some equipment malfunction.

While I watched, the second plane hit.  It became clear this wasn't an accident.

When I arrived in the Department of Geography, Dr. Estaville had a television set up just outside the department's main office.  Undergrads, Master's and Ph.D. students, faculty, and staff were all stopped in the hallway glued to the screen.  Rumors were flying.  The White House was struck.  The Pentagon.

Then, it all be can to settle in.  The Pentagon had been struck.  A fourth plane downed by heroic passengers who gave their lives to save how many hundreds more.

The Pentagon!  OMG!  A friend I'd taught with and babysat for who's husband was an officer in the Air Force was stationed at the Pentagon now.  Where was Todd?  How was Todd?  How was Sheri?  Did she know anything?  I dared not call because family would be frantic.  I was just a friend a 1000+ miles away.

Then, it just got worse.  Three teachers, three sixth grade students, and two National Geographic staffers were on their way to the Channel Islands from Washington, D.C., for a National Geographic/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency research project.  They were on the Pentagon plane.  Joe Ferguson (of Durant, MS, and bastion of the Education Outreach division) and Ann Judge (who made travel miracles happen for National Geographic writers and photographers all over the globe - including me just two months earlier).  People I knew well enough to call friends and colleagues were on the plane where hijackers told them to call home, they were going to die.

Word came that another member of the geographic community was on one of the other planes that day.  I fail to remember his name.  All was blocked by fear for my friend Sheri and her two children and deep sadness and pain for my friends Joe and Ann and the teachers and students with whom they were sharing their passion for geography.

Sheri's husband Todd should have been in E-wing of the Pentagon, but was off-site that day.  She learned of his safety when he walked in the door at 9:00 p.m. that evening.

My brother, then stationed in Norfolk on the USS Archerfish, was actually in Texas making visits to medical schools.  The Archerfish was set to be underway in just a few weeks, and he was hoping to schedule interviews for admission before he left for sea.  On Friday, just before September 11, 2001.  He stopped at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.  The admissions officer, a retired Navy physician himself, told him to show up the next Friday, in uniform.  They would interview him.  My brother phoned his wife still in Norfolk, and she FedEx'd the requested uniform to my parents' home.

Then on September 11, 2001... The Archerfish was put out to sea, and underway early.  All leave was suspended, but there were no flights anywhere.  My brother was told to sit tight in Texas until further orders.

Friday, post 9/11, my brother walked into an interview for medical school, in Navy dress whites.  I don't know if it made an impact on the admissions committee.  It's significance was not lost on my family.  Several months later, we learned he had been admitted to UTHSC-H as a medical student.  You never saw a more proud family when we attended his "White Coat" ceremony the next fall.

Today is my husband's birthday.  We celebrate and try to take time away from the somberness of the date - which also marks the beginning of the Communist Revolution in China.  And, I take a few moments to remember Joe, Ann, and the teachers and students with them.  The excitement as they set out on a new adventure.

I Remember This Much....

I don't remember the details of my first day as a teacher intern at Mark Twain Middle School 18 years ago, but I do remember that I did not feel welcome.  In hindsight, I'm willing to take partial responsibility for my perceptions of the day.

I was an outsider.  Not only not from Trinity University, I majored in agricultural economics -- not education.  I graduated from Texas Tech University on May 15, 1993, but I started summer school in Trinity's Master of Arts in Teaching program during finals week at Tech.  At the end of the six-week summer session, I moved to Denmark, Maine, to work as a camp counselor for Camp Walden. Camp ran until the last week in August, but Texas' schools started the second week in August.  Everyone knew I was going to be starting my internship a week late because of my work commitment.  At least I thought they did.

My experience with adolescents was limited to my younger brother (a senior in high school at the time), my own experience with Masonic youth organizations (Rainbow, Job's Daughters, and DeMolay), and my time at Camp Walden.  My mother taught at a high school English and journalism (but had been a full-professor at a community college for a while).  My paternal grandmother taught first grade for 40 years.  My paternal grandfather served as principal and then tax collector for a school district.  I'd been on the Dean's List, kept my scholarship all four years, and had only ONE "C" on my transcript - ever.  I was a smart girl.  How hard could this "teaching thing" be, really?

So, it is quite possibly with a very large chip on my shoulder than I walked into my mentor teacher's eighth grade classroom that August morning eager to begin my nine-month placement as at teacher intern.

I remember this much...

"I told them I didn't want one [an intern] this year.  And, they gave me you.  Where were you?  You're not from Trinity are you?!"

She was a very "global" personality -- teaching units on "Power" and "Revolution" instead of "Colonial America" and "the American Revolution"  She planned interdisciplinary units that made little sense to me or to the students - I thought.

She and her friends went to lunches off campus.  I felt left out even when included.  I just never quite felt like I fit in like I thought I should've.  We had things in common.  We both had Morgan horses.  We had common acquaintances (and I would run into her regularly for several years after I left her classroom).  I thought as a "mentor teacher" we would be fast-friends.  We weren't.

I'm sure there were good days in my mentor teacher's classroom.  I don't remember them.  I never had a space that was mine to store my coat, my purse, my "teacher bag."  My desk was a nearly broken, graffitied student desk.  I never had the respect of the students.  Maybe I hadn't earned it.  Maybe they knew what I knew -- she didn't respect me.  (I made a few friends from Trinity in summer school, and I remember the fun we had - taking their students to the regional YMCA camp for team building activities, coffee and study sessions at La Madeleine near campus, and road trips to check out schools in Bryan/College Station.  I don't think any of us quite understood why we watched Rashomon in class one evening or how it related to secondary education.)

I struggled with classroom management.  I made mistakes as a teacher intern.  If you asked my mentor teacher from that fall/winter, she would probably be able to name them all.  Some were bigger than others.  I tried to learn from them all.  She probably didn't see it that way. 

Several people saw my struggle and still saw potential.  In mid-January, the university reassigned me to a different classroom on the campus.  From my first day in my new placement, I felt welcomed.

"We're going on a field trip to the Witte.  Here are your 10 students [sixth graders]. (Pause) This is Miss Foster, our new teacher."

I still made mistakes.  I still struggled with classroom management (something I think all teachers feel like they must revisit daily).  Most of all, I learned I could be a strong teacher who cared for her students.

So, what did I learn from my placement in the fall/winter of 1993-94?  I learned that this "teacher thing" is pretty hard work, and my family made it look easy.  I learned that students need routine and structure as much as they need to investigate and explore the content.  You can have too much of a good thing - too many projects/activities, too many worksheets, too many tests, too many skits.  The ancient Greeks said it best, "Nothing in excess." 

I graduated with my MAT on May 9, 1994 -- one week short of one year from finishing my Bachelor's degree.