Also in the Midwest. They had actually announced something over the intercoms very very early into it, but they were also very very vague. It was probably not short after the 2nd plane hit. Basically the principal came on and told the teachers something big in the news was happening and they should turn the TV on. I remember my teacher's reaction to the poor reception on the TV being "Oh, a plane crashed into a building and it's on fire." He was so nonchalant about it, that he turned it off not sure why they would tell us about that. It wasn't until next class or so we started understanding it was on purpose because it was 2 planes.
What is interesting is that none of the teachers explained to us what was going on directly, it was basically the talk about school that spread information. I think they either assumed we all understood terrorism, or were too shocked themselves to really process anything internally that day. You knew it was a big deal when your gym class rolls out a TV though, and the next day you hear the teachers are banned from talking about it because they heard someone there had a family member die in it.
What I was getting at is even in 8th grade, because people who were supposed to teach us things weren't doing it, I had a gap in knowledge of the world. It wasn't until 9th that I had teachers who weren't shy from telling us how big and important a day was-- I still recall my history teacher talking about how big a day it was when we declared war on Iraq and went in.