I recall getting a day off from school after the Challenger disaster.
And IIRC, schools being closed for several days after 9/11/01.
I edited @Cooke’s post to give better context for this thread
Really? Wow, we didn’t.
No clue about 9/11 though. They may have been. I assume they were in & around NYC at a minimum.
I also seem to recall that the US schools closed the day JFK was shot? Canadian schools weren’t closed, of course, but I recall being very upset personally. Most folks were in shock and the world seemed to stand still until after his funeral. I watched Walter Conkrite for hours: Queen’s death just doesn’t produce the same emotions for me!
I was a freshman in high school. This was the first flight with a “civilian teacher” (McCauliff) as part of the flight crew. Having watched the disaster live was the reason that the principal (with support from the superintendent and school board) gave the following day off to allow for kids and teachers some time to deal with such a tragedy.
I was a teacher at a junior college for this one. I was watching the TV with live footage of when the second plane hit the WTC. I went to class, but didn’t teach but informed the kids of what had happened (and many thought I was trying to play a practical joke). The Dean cancelled classes for the rest of the week since there were students that had family and friends of their families that actually worked in the WTC (not to mention working in the district).
Huh. Our schools didn’t close for either. They didn’t even let out early on 9/11. I went to pick up my kids from elementary school, and parent volunteers were handing out a piece of paper that said the school hadn’t told the kids, but we had to do so today, because otherwise they would certainly learn about it from the other students tomorrow, and they should be told by their parents.
We watched it, and not much actual teaching happened the rest of the day, but they didn’t cancel school or anything. That seems like a tad bit of overkill.
Maybe not for the school, or even the district where Mrs. McAuliffe was teaching, but for a random school… I think there’s a lesson in moving on. Plus it’s not like parents got the day off work, so the chaos in closing schools is a logistical nightmare for some.
hard to compare death of a 96 yr old of very natural causes to a public assassination.
we watched challenger in 10th grade and had school the next day. were aware of the teacher element of the launch.
9/11 i was at work. we got to leave early. i stayed later than most working, then went home. (midwest)
This was during the height of the Latch-Key Kid generation. Either there was a “stay at home” parent (usually the mom) or the kid was allowed to be “by themself” for a couple of hours (or longer) until a parent was off work.
Note: I grew up in a very rural mountain town that was predominately agricultural based with blue-collar jobs in several coal mining operations (there were 3 w/i an hour’s drive of my hometown).
I think my employer officially let us leave early but my department absolutely did NOT get to leave early as we had too much going on, including a crap-ton of meetings scheduled that week as a lot of folks from other offices had traveled in for that week.
I think I mentioned elsewhere that the office was in the tallest building in something like the 137th largest city in the US so naturally people were extremely concerned that we would also be targeted that day. Because everyone knows that right after New York City and Washington DC… Podunksville, USA is absolutely #3 on every terrorist hit list. I think the average intelligence of my department was enough above the company average that I don’t think any of my immediate co-workers were sincerely worried, but if they were they didn’t say anything. I know some in the company were terrified though which was preposterous to me, but you can’t really reason with irrational fear.
Obviously all of us were deeply upset. In addition to everything else, we had clients in the WTC… people who most of us had interacted with on a semi-regular basis and had built a working relationship with. Several of whom died although it took days to learn their fates.
Well, we didn’t have much of a choice, those of us who worked at NYU.
I couldn’t get into the city from Queens. The subway service kept getting suspended.
I don’t remember an official policy, but i told my staff they could go home, and i left early, too. It’s not as if anyone was going to get any work done. People were standing around listening to the radio and looking dazed.
I got a frantic call from a friend afraid the building i worked in would be next. I was working in a low building near higher buildings. I don’t think it would be physically possible to hit it with an airplane. And… When you want to make a showy attack against US powers, i don’t think “insurance company!” is what comes to mind.
I was a little concerned my rail line might have a bomb on it or something, because “major railroad lines” are kinda suggestive of power, and are vulnerable. The guy driving the train must also have been worried, because we went at about 4mph, the whole route.
My kids were too young for challenger and I live in the NY area, so hard to judge for 9/11
for 9/11 - If the kids were off from school it wasn’t a day of mourning as much as fear of what was to follow. The day of, schools were closed early, but no child was sent home without someone to come and pick them up
I spent most of the day online, trying to look up the people i knew who worked in the WTC. A lot of them were at a CAS meeting in New Orleans. (And had a lot of trouble getting back home, to New York.) Late in the afternoon one posted on either the CAS water-cooler or possibly the actuarial outpost, which was brand new. I remember feeling hugely relieved to see him post.
Hmmm, I was in 8th grade. I walked into the class and the teacher was already watching it on TV.
I think we closed a little early on 9/11 but later than most of the other locations within the company which was odd since my office was in manhattan and i could see the towers on fire from it. We were closed on 9/12. Manhattan was a ghost town.
Yeah not mourning, more like fear and i think the not closing immediately was because they didnt know what to do and getting out of Manhattan was not easy depending on where you lived. I think people had to walk across bridges
No idea when we closed, not sure if we did, but anyone who needed to leave, did.
Probably worked from home for a few days
I imagine the teachers talked about with the older kids. But my kids were in a K-5 school.
My kids were in three different grade schools.
I picked up the K-5, wife got Middle schooler, HS was allowed to leave
In retrospect, I don’t know kids at that age can be traumatized by something like that.
I was on the west coast and I didn’t even know what the twin towers were. And what happened on TV was a blur to me. We did some holding hands thing on the street to show support and I only understood the point of that when I was much older.