StC News
Students and Faculty Remember 9/11
StC boys reflect and learn on the 18th anniversary of the attacks.
The boys at St. Christopher’s School are too young to remember the attacks of September 11, 2001, but nevertheless, many have strong personal connections to the event. Some have family members who lived through it, others hear stories of people helplessly watching the attacks unfold in real-time on television, and some have family members or friends who lost loved ones in the attacks.
Today, the boys in Derek Porter’s sixth grade Global Thinking class remembered that day 18 years ago through stories and classroom lectures. Boys gathered at the flagpole near the HIstoric Corridor this morning to have a moment of silence, reflect and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
“It’s so hard to put kids in the emotional spaces of history,” said Porter. “It’s important for them to understand why that flag has dropped down. That there’s been an actual subtraction from America on this day is really important to understand. I think they get that, they can understand that loss.”
In the afternoon, Dr. Sarah Mansfield, Assistant Head of School, visited a sixth-grade classroom to talk about her personal experiences during the attacks. As a teacher in a Midlothian high school and unable to watch the attacks on TV, Mansfield only truly understand the seriousness of the attacks until she learned that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, near her parent’s home. “My heart just crashed. I started to panic,” she said.
Mansfield encouraged the boys to ask their parents and older siblings about that day and to be prepared for emotional responses, but also to think about heroism and the national unity following the attacks.
“One thing I think is interesting about this whole experience is the stories of people who went back into the buildings to help,” she said. “That day, it didn’t matter if you were male or female, Democrat or Republican, or what your ethnicity was. We were all one country that was united. We were trying to be kind or considerate to each other.”
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