Claudia
My Story

It was around ten o'clock. Two people had already left. No one knew why. Then, our principal and a house advisor ran into our room. The principal first asked us if any of our parents worked in the world trade centers. Fortunately, no one's parents in my class did.

After that we had a discussion about it in class. Someone said, did the plane go through the building. My class responded thinking Yeah Right. More people from my class started leaving. We all went to lunch. More people left then too. I went upstairs to my classroom. When I got there my teacher told me to go downstairs because my mom was there.

The school was a total lockdown. What happened was your parent would tell a teacher their child's name. Then what would happen is they would find you and bring you downstairs. Then they would call out your parents name out, and they would come and get you. What usually happens is high schoolers are allowed to leave the school during labs. That day no one was aloud to go out.

By the end of the day there were only four kids left in my class. My dad had gone out to lunch. We were worried sick. When I got home, basically what we did the whole day was watch the TV to see what was going on. People from all over the world called us. Later that night I started crying. I didn't think anything like this would happen in New York. It was really strange.