Remembering

We often hear about teachers inspiring students, and I hope I've done so, but this is a post about me being inspired by one of my students. In 2017 for my observation I did a project on the Holocaust in which the kids designed a butterfly to honor someone who had been in the concentration camps.  I had some of the kids who need a little more help tie the quilt to learn a life skill.  After working on it a little while, one of them asked me if I'd consider making a 9/11 quilt.  I have to admit at first I wasn't sure I wanted to undertake this project, but I really respected him asking me.  The more I thought about it the more I really felt like it would mean a lot to him that I'd listened and I was pleased with my first class quilt so I decided to go for it.
The week surrounding 9/11 I had the patches available in the cafeteria and we had a schedule disruption that was ideal for having my classes make blocks.  I was initially disappointed that we didn't have more blocks than we did, but I realized that none of my students were old enough to remember that day and the blocks I did get had a lot of meaning to them.  It took me longer to put this together so the seniors from last year didn't get to see the finished product.  When I did finally finish it I hung it in my classroom and made a point to tell the student that inspired me about it before he came to class.  He was so excited and wanted his picture with it, unfortunately with the virus I didn't have as much time to take the picture as I thought...

This past weekend when we were visiting Somerset County I took the quilt to the Flight 93 memorial.  A family saw my husband and I taking pictures and wanted to know if we were going to go to all three sites.  I decided since our school is in Pennsylvania and I'm not a huge fan of city driving I'd only take the pictures at flight 93