Bank Street College Offers Insights About 9/11
by Tom Kertes

“Due to the film’s raw power,” Bank Street College provided “a small, secure place for group discussion” after the showing of “Our School.” Not one person took advantage of the considerate offer.

Are we that immune by now to 9/11? Or do people, basically in shock, just react matter-of-factly to unspeakable tragedy? That, of course, is the very theme of “Our School,” a film by Lori Hamilton. Hamilton is a parent at P.S. 234, an elementary school with 620 students at Ground Zero, standing approximately three blocks away from the Twin Towers.

“Originally, this started out as just making a historical record for my son who’s in the third grade there,” said Hamilton. “Then, as I was shooting the film, it evolved into something different practically every day. Just as the meaning of 9/11 does.” The movie is comprised of interviews with teachers, aides, maintenance people, and the principal of P.S. 234 months after the monstrous event, just as they began the process of reoccupying the school (which was used as a Red Cross center in the interim).

The movie is majestic in its very mundane-mess; the participants’ recollections are not that different from anyone else’s who’s lived through that day of devastation. “As we were attempting to run away from the school—a child holding my hand tightly—and I were stumbling all over the darkness in my three-inch clogs, I realized that not one of us was wearing the proper shoes,” one teacher says. Another recalls that, as she expresses fear that the towers might fall right ON the school, one of her second-graders explains that, “in Manhattan, all the buildings were constructed so they fall straight down.” “You’re seven years old, how would you know something like that?” the teacher asks in amazement.

A school aide, who was instrumental in putting the school safety plan together, confesses matter-of-factly that “the very first moment, the entire plan was out the window.” Principal Anne Switzer is in icy control of the unprecedented events throughout the entire morning, only to collapse in hysterics on the steps of a store in the early afternoon when “it was all over and I knew all the children were safe.” Teachers go through the gamut of disbelief, shock, consternation, fear, and anger, but never let go of the idea that “the children come first”.

None of them display much on emotion on the outside. When all the students gather in the lunchroom, they read books to them and hand out snacks. Some kids begin to make drawings, needing to process the event immediately. An office-guy has a whistle. “As long as I heard that whistle, I knew everything was going to be all right,” a young kindergarten teacher said. When everyone must trod into the basement— something that was never done before—the teachers turn it into a game in order to allay the children’s’ fear (shades of Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning “Life is Beautiful”.)

Professionals retain control when everything around them is so desperately out of control. And the main focus is always the kids. “Those teachers put the children’s’ safety ahead of all other concerns, even their own lives,” Hamilton said. “This film is many things. But, mainly, it is a note of ‘thank you’.”#

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