What Ms. Dorn said stuck.
The fourth grade teacher at Pershing Elementary School, trying to explain the unexplainable, offered her class reassuring instructions.
Look to the person to your left and tell them you care for them, then do the same to the person to your right.
Then she told the students something terrible had happened. The World Trade Center was burning. America was under attack.
There was no TV in Ms. Dorn's classroom, Cody Thatcher remembers, so the class went across the hall, where others were watching the horror unfold, the Twin Towers like two chimneys churning out black smoke, staining the pristine New York City sky.
"(Ms. Dorn) had no idea she was going to be talking about any of those things that day when she showed up," recalled Thatcher, then a fourth grader in her class. "This really kind of showed me the power of teaching."
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In a strange way, he says, Sept. 11, 2001, is one of the reasons he is where he is today, teaching world history at Schoo Middle School, sharing his own "where were you" story about an event that his students don't even remember — let alone were alive to experience.
"Just having that moment with them to say, 'Wow, this is what you remember and you were that young,' that kind of immediately flips the switch," he said.
Thatcher and Mike Hix, who also teaches seventh grade world history at Schoo, drafted their own lesson plan on 9/11 years ago, complete with firsthand accounts, videos, worksheets and their own personal memories.
Like many teachers in Lincoln, they acknowledge the attack with an entire day in September devoted to it.
"It's something we've been working on for years," Hix said. "It changes a little bit every year, and we add more to it. It's always a powerful and emotional lesson."
Then, a couple of years ago, Thatcher stumbled on a post from the 9/11 Tribute Museum in New York.
The museum wanted teachers from across the country to share their own lesson plans, to see how students learned about one of the most infamous days in U.S. history.
"I was just like, 'Hey, let's give it a try,'" Thatcher said. "As a teacher I like to share when lessons are powerful."
One of the most powerful elements of the lesson is an article Thatcher displays on the wall.
An article written 10 years later, about a fourth grader in Nebraska on that day who remembers what his teacher told him, walking across the hall, a fighter jet streaking through an otherwise empty Lincoln sky.
That was me, Thatcher tells his students.
"They're like, 'Wow, that's you?' That's why we're going to spend so much time, because I know none of you were alive during this event."
Hix was a high school student in Waverly when he heard the news on the radio. Like many, he thought it was an accident before reality sunk in.
He walked through the halls, angry, sad, searching for answers. New fears arose.
"I remember waiting in line to get gas," Hix said.
When he first taught about 9/11, it was still fresh in many people's memories. Today, it's history for his students.
"It's an eye-opening lesson," he said. "A lot of times it's emotional and there will be some watery eyes."
Hix and Thatcher keep the material age-appropriate and have students fill out worksheets with what they already know, the questions they have, and what they learned. They teach about the fallout American Muslims experienced, cautionary tales about the Islamophobia that gripped the U.S.
"It's really important for us ... that we clarify it wasn't an attack by a religion against a country," Thatcher said.
The lesson also incorporates the lasting impact of the terrorist attacks, including decades of war in Afghanistan and first responders battling cancer years later.
But the class ends on a high note, too, with the the music video for "Walk On," U2's uplifting tribute to 9/11.
Like all of Hix's students, Leslie Garcia wasn't yet born on Sept. 11, 2001. Unlike her parents, the 12-year-old seventh grader at Schoo has no memory of what happened.
She remembers first learning about 9/11 in elementary school and how sad, yet important, that day was.
"It was just scary at first," she said. "It's just trying to fit into someone's shoes when it happened."
Some of the Lincoln Public Schools' newest teachers don't remember it, either, said Jaci Kellison, social studies curriculum specialist.
"They were only 3 or 4 years old," she said.
That means teachers have to find new ways to bring those memories into the classroom, Kellison said, perhaps using guest speakers or webinars from the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, memorialized on Sept. 11 and recognized as Patriot Day, are noted at each school in the district.
Some schools hold a moment of silence, while others will have students send letters and care packages to first responders, Kellison said.
Like his fourth grade teacher, Thatcher still struggles sometimes explaining the unexplainable.
But the lesson remains important — and relevant — in today's world.
"It's pretty exhausting going through this multiple times, reliving it and thinking about it," said Thatcher, "and I tell the kids it's that important and that significant for us to go through it, because it shaped your world."
Lincoln Journal Star readers remember 9/11
Twenty years later, Journal Star readers offered their memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
20 years ago found me hosting classical music shows on Nebraska Public Media, and we, like every other news organization, had been wall-to-wal…
My memories come from the perspective of a local travel agency on a normal clear-sky Tuesday morning, expecting a calm day. Shortly after we g…
That morning I was attending a meeting away from my home.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was flying to a conference with a co-worker. We had a layover in Chicago, and started talking basketball — specifically a…
Some years, I haven’t wanted to remember. As the posts started to fill social media on Sept. 10, I would find myself resisting, wanting the ne…
This is what I REMEMBER ...
My husband and I were driving to his Navy reunion in Minneapolis.
We were in Chicago’s Union Station. There was not the hustle and bustle we had anticipated. Chalking it up as maybe a slow travel day we settl…
A few weeks after my 70th birthday, in preparation for my second Peace Corps tour, I was at my daughter’s in Oklahoma City where we were decid…
The weather was beautiful as we walked into federal court in Omaha that day. A two-week jury trial was coming to a close. We were defending an…
“They’re going to have to jackhammer in the living room.†Not words I wanted to hear.
I was a ninth grader at Irving Middle School on 9/11. I was working on a multimedia project when my teacher told us to stop what we were doing…
Like many Americans, 9/11 has many memories of varied emotions for me. The one I want to share is a tribute of thankfulness.
On a sunny fall Tuesday 20 years ago, I was working in New York two short blocks from the Empire State Building. I learned of the first plane …
I will never forget that day. My son had been living in New York since 2000. His offices were in Manhattan, but I wasn’t sure if he was workin…
My son Marshall, age 4, my father Eugene and I were in the car on the way to Grand Island for the opening day of Husker Harvest Days.
I was in NYC on 9/11, working on the 35th floor of a building at 42nd and Lexington with a direct view of the towers.
(This short verse was written on the morning after 9/11.)
9/11 marked my oldest son’s birthday. He was in Ecuador at the time with the Peace Corps. After the attack on the Twin Towers, I never worried…
I did not immediately realize that what was happening in New York and Washington, D.C., would have long-lasting implications.
Sept. 11, 2001, would have been my parents’ 52nd wedding anniversary.
Shocked, staring out my hotel window at the Sears Tower thinking, "My God, that's next. I have to get out of here."
Sept. 11, 2001, started off like any other Tuesday morning at that time in our lives: busy. With three small children, both my wife and I empl…
Alan Jackson’s song about 9/11 has a line, “Teaching a class full of innocent children.†It reminds me of the most difficult day I ever had teaching.
“Terror Hits Pentagon, World Trade Center,†blared the headline of the special edition of the Washington Post the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. I…
During the summer of 2001 I painted a rather large U.S. map on the hard surface near the flag at our school. Each state was painted with a var…
I remember that day very well.
As the Mayor of Lincoln on Sept. 11, 2001, I drove into work that Tuesday morning listening to the news on the local radio station. I remember…
I was traveling for work that day, having arrived in Galesburg, Illinois, as a railroad contractor the night before. Headed to breakfast, the …
The phone in my classroom rang during a free period. The headmaster's secretary of the private all-boys prep school where I taught in suburban…