‘Nothing was normal from there on in’: Former school principal remembers 9/11 – WTOP News

Dan Shea, the former principal at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, had a hard and fast rule about his teacher observations: He was not to be interrupted. 

But on the morning of 9/11, there was a knock on the door in the classroom where he was observing a French class. “And it was my secretary.”

Shea mouthed to his staff member that he was in the middle of his observation, but his secretary kept beckoning him to come into the hallway.

“A student leaned back in his chair and said, ‘You know, Shea, why don’t you go talk to her?’,” he said. 

Shea then got up, left the classroom, and said his secretary told him what was known shortly after 9 a.m. — a plane had crashed into a building in New York. 

“I closed the door, I left the observation, and my whole day changed from there on in. Nothing was normal from there on in,” he said. 

Handling the crisis

Immediately, there were instructions from the Montgomery County school system’s central office to go on lockdown.

“The advice was stay on lockdown, no one leaves the building without permission, and so we went into that protocol,” recalled Shea.

Within 40 minutes, Shea said, there was a long line of parents at the front door of the school to retrieve their children. 

By the time another 40 minutes passed, said Shea, at least 100 students were released to their parents, but the majority of kids were still trying to reach their own families. 

After news that the Pentagon had been struck, and that the U.S. Capitol and the White House were being evacuated; the anxiety levels for many students spiked.

Shea remembers hearing students telling him that they were worried because their own parents worked in downtown D.C and they couldn’t reach either parent.

In some cases, students made clear they just couldn’t stay in their classrooms, they needed to be in the office, or to visit with the nurse.

“I had services of extra counselors, I had services of a nurse,” and in some cases was able to get students who wanted one-on-one time with a counselor that opportunity. 

While teachers and staff worked to calm students, answer questions, resume lessons, or simply absorb what was happening, Shea set up a sort of phone triage system in his office.

Shea was able to tackle the logistics of the job with his walkie-talkie and phones outside of his office to allow kids to use the phone on his desk. “So I could take that really anxious child and say, look, here’s my chair, you can dial as many times as you want and just sit right here. You don’t have to be in a line, you don’t have to be in front of all your friends, and we could put that one student on that one phone,” until they were able to get through to parents or guardians. 

Shea recalls doing the same with the school nurse’s phone. By 2:15 p.m., Shea said, nearly all the school’s roughly 2,000 students had been released to family members. 

The father of one student was killed in the attack at the Pentagon and Shea recalled that the next day was a somber one.

That following day, Shea said, there were a few more absences than normal, but many students seemed eager to be among their friends. 

Final thoughts

“The issue of 9/11 was such a huge national issue, but it created an awareness of what do you need to be prepared for,” said Shea. 

Even before 9/11, Shea said, students were becoming accustomed to being instructed in how to respond in emergencies, especially those prompted by school shootings.

“It’s really a sad story, but kids are far more conversant with an incident and the immediacy that may occur and to how they’re supposed to react. So, that’s an unfortunate circumstance, but that’s where we are. We have to be aware of imminent threats and imminent danger and things like that,” Shea said. 

As a result: “I think we are better prepared for national emergencies.” 

Editor’s note: Kate Ryan worked as a teacher at QOHS on 9/11 when Dan Shea served as principal there.