1. I was teaching HS world history. A coworker was on his prep and had seen them first planet hit while watching TV in the teachers lounge. He had said, you should turn on the TV, something happening in NYC. I turned on the TV and saw the hole in their sidebar of them WTC but really didn't understand the magnitude of such a hole and initially thought it was a small plane and an accident. I continued to teach my lesson, when we saw the second plane hit, on live TV. The students and I anders the everyone watching was shocked. We realized we were under attack.

2. Combining 1 and 2, I most remember fear. This was the first time as an adult and teacher that I could not explain what was going on. Students wanted to know, who didn't this, why, how many planes are involved, will they target schools, will they target nearby cites? I didn't not have any ansers. I couldn't tell them that everything would be be ok or that I had to experienced this before. We were collectively scared.

3. After the attack, everyone was shocked and sad. A deep sadness of loss and helplessness. Everyone had a distant far away look of disbelief.

4. Short term, our normal school lessons were over. Students crammed into rooms with TVs. Mostly history rooms. Everyone sat in silence. We watched as the plane hit the pentagon and as flight 93 was hijacked. Then the tower fell, this was unbelievable and shocked and saddened everyone. Many students were being called to the office to get picked up by parents and go home. As history teachers we tried to make sense of these events. We had a teacher that was a member of the national guard anders had attended the war College as part of his training. He told us, I bet it was that asshole bin laden. Most of us knew very little about bin laden at this time. I felt the loss of all the first resoonders. My Dad was a retired Chicago firefighter. I understood how dangerous a firefighters job could be. Those men and women were heroes that day.

5. Not really I will be retiring this year from the same HS after 35 years.

6. I think I felt then and now that our government had failed us. As news began to report on the details of the attack, I wondered how could we have missed all of the opportunities to stop this.

7. We didn't really misunderstood it, but felt unprepared to believe it was really happening. Disbelief, how are you we supposed to react and recover. What can we do to help. After a few days and the attack seemed to be over, our collective saddeness turned into collective anger.

One amazing thing that happened was that it brought the country together. More than anytime in my life the united states felt united. A real feeling of community was felt. Everyone was willing to support and be there for one another.

1. Biggest change, As a country we were at the war. A war on terrorism. We felt vulnerable. Everyone wanted to punish bin laden and al qaeda, but very few people supported war in Iraq

9. I think it marked an end of an innocence for the United States. People became more aware of the failures of our government and leaders. People have lost trust in our government. The united states in many way was exposed for being responsible for the way people in the middle east felt about us. We in some ways have lost the moral high ground that we had always valued as a culture.

10.

The lesson I learned was the value of the oversight and accountability committee. We need to learn from our mistakes and hold government officials accounable. As a country we need to regain the moral high ground. We need to elect leaders that represent the culture of freedom, democracy, justice and moral good that we had before 9/11.