Through a child's eyes

When Patrick Mayer's third-grade daughter saw the footage of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York, she asked with wide eyes, "Were there people on that plane?"

"Yes, there were, honey," Mayer responded.

"That's awful," the little girl said.

As principal of Pioneer Peak Elementary, Mayer had to be prepared for a lot of these types of questions when, on the same morning as four planes were apparently hijacked and intentionally crashed on the East Coast, hundreds of Mat-Su schoolchildren arrived at his school.

"Yesterday morning, I awoke like everybody else to hear about the tragedy," Mayer said Wednesday from Pioneer Peak Elementary. When he arrived at school, he decided the first step was to organize a staff meeting. Two people employed at the school are trained as counselors and the staff discussed as a whole how best to help their students.

"We wanted to talk to our students about how the school is a safe environment, that they are safe here," Mayer said.

This was one of the overriding messages around the district as adults and children dealt with the news that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people had been killed in apparent terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

"We needed to provide an opportunity for students to share their feelings," said Kim Floyd, information specialist for the Mat-Su Borough School District. "We wanted to be able to reassure students that we consider schools to be very safe places to be."

Floyd said schools were able to tap into resources ranging from counselors and school psychologists to community groups such as Life Quest. Teachers were advised to watch students for signs of anxiety or fear and, if necessary, get them to the right people. The district also sent a letter home to parents with tips on how best to help their children through the trauma.

The responses at individual schools, Floyd pointed out, varied based on the ages of the students.

For the youngest children, helping them feel safe and secure was a top priority. The older the students, however, the more questions they had and the more need there was for discussion.

Mayer said his teachers were advised to answer questions about the terrorist attacks as honestly as possible, without speculating on information not yet available.

"We expected more piercing questions from the older students," Mayer said.

At the high school level, some teachers set up televisions in the classrooms so students could follow the developments. In many cases, the attacks were interwoven into classroom discussions as teachers tried to acknowledge the sweeping effects while still attempting to lead a somewhat normal educational day.

At the same time, some staff members and students were coping with personal involvement in the tragedies. Floyd said there have been cases of local residents knowing or being related to people directly affected by the attacks.

"You never know what the connections are," Floyd said. "It's a very small world."

Floyd said district officials did discuss the option of closing school Tuesday in light of the attacks, but, after meeting with the borough emergency management team, decided it was better to continue as scheduled.

"We felt we may be sending students home to unsupervised situations," Floyd said.

Mayer said some of his parents did keep their students home for the day.

"And we understood that," Mayer said.

While classes were not canceled, the district did shut down all after-school activities on Tuesday.

"We wanted students to be able to have time with their families, to be able to support each other," Floyd said. "Out of respect for the victims and the grave situation, we felt that was the right thing to do."

As of Wednesday, however, all regular school activities were to continue as planned.