Remembering 9/11/01(September 11, 2015) RMS English teacher Ryan Greene has been sharing "his story" of history on 9/11 every year for 12 years. It's a poignant story that only he can share, and, this year on 9/11/2015, he shared it, as he noted, for the first time with a class of students who had not yet been born. Mr. Greene shared with his 7th grade students that on 9/11/01 he was a college student in Maryland. Like everyone who remembers that day clearly, he noted that it was a "beautiful day". Before he knew anything about what had happened that day, he tried to call his parents, but couldn't get through. He turned on a television and watched the news with cameras focused on smoke pouring from the World Trade Center while newscasters puzzled together about what had happened. Then, he watched as the second plane crashed into the second tower. Next, a bit panicked, he ran to a corner pay phone to call his parents. His father was a New York City firefighter and he worried that he might have been called to the site of the crash. Mr. Greene's mother answered and told him that his father was instead with his grandmother, who lay dying in a local hospital. Mr. Greene shared that his father had never missed a day of work in 30 years, but on this day, 9/11/01, was by his mother's bedside and not with his unit at the World Trade Center. |
English teacher Ryan Greene's 7th grade class at RMS.
"Tragically," shared Mr. Greene, "everybody else in my dad's firehouse, all 19 firefighters, died that day. My father would have perished with them if he had not been at my grandmother's bedside." Mr. Greene traveled the next day to New York City to attend his grandmother's funeral, but after arriving at Penn Station decided, before he went home, to visit the World Trade Center site to see it for himself. He was wearing a FDNY sweatshirt his father had given him and was allowed past the barricades. "I'll never forget what it looked like at Ground Zero," he told his class. "I think it's important," he concluded, "that we remember that day in a way that doesn't allow it to become just another day -- like so many that have lost their original importance." |
RMS Reflects on 9/11/01
The first row of photos are from Social studies teacher Ed Kneski's 7th grade social studies class. The second row of photos are from English teacher Ryan Greene's 7th grade English Language Arts class. Both classes had follow up writing assignments for homework.