Flint Hill Students Plant 3,000 Flags in Honor of 9/11

Alina Augustine was 6 years old on Sept. 11, 2001. She does not remember the attacks.

She remembers when she got home from school that day, her parents were glued to the television and she was not allowed to join them.

"When I got back to school, I remember we did a ceremony where they told us kind of what was happening, but I didn't really know what was going on," she said. "I don't think I really understood what happened until I was older."

On Monday, Augustine joined her Flint Hill classmates in a memorial assembly that ended with each of them placing flags on the grounds in front of the Upper School in memory of the nearly 3,000 people who died on 9/11.

Ten years after the attacks, schools are now filled with students who were either too young to understand what happened on 9/11 or not even born yet. It's precisely that reason Flint Hill School made sure its memorial program to mark the 10th anniversary proceeded despite the postponement after last week's floods.

The program, organized by faculty members Lisa Williams and Shannan Schuster, deliberately included an educational component because students don't have the same kind of memory, if any memory at all, from 9/11 as those who were old enough to watch the coverage.

"We wanted something really visible so the greater community could see what we did, and we wanted there to be a learning piece for kids that was meaningful," Schuster said.

The assembly started with students and faculty reading the chronology of events from Sept. 11. At the end, Williams acknowledged the students who exceeded community service expectations last school year and called on students see the events of 9/11 as motivation to offer time to a cause that would make the world a better place.

The students watched the "I Will" public service announcement that promotes 9/11 as the National Day of Service and Remembrance, then were tasked with coming up with "I Will" statements of their own. Watch the PSA by clicking on the video in the upper left of this article.

"The call to action for the future, to challenge them to do something and move that forward was really important in completing the cycle to remind them that it's not just a single day, it's an act of commitment to remember what happened," Williams said.

Flint Hill's Lower School also participated in memorial events. After learning about heroes, the Lower School students colored American flags and hung them up around the building. The Middle School students watched the "I Will" video and came up with statements of their own, and signed a banner that they hung up on the backstop of the softball field.

The Upper School's ceremony ended with the students and faculty planting American flags to honor those who died on 9/11.

"I thought it was pretty moving," Augustine said. "It's pretty crazy looking at all the flags right now and seeing how each one stands for a person who died."