by AFT President Sandra Feldman
October 2001

America's future
rests on what
schools teach
every day.

On September 11, some 8,000 children were at school in what Americans have come to know as "ground zero." Many of the children saw, from their classroom windows, the World Trade Center towers, which were part of their everyday landscape, swallowed up in flames. Within minutes, the children were plunged into darkness, breathing air thick with smoke and fear. But every single child escaped and was safely delivered to grateful parents; not one was lost. What saved them? The courageous and clear-headed actions of their teachers, principals, and other school staff.

These city schools are so close to the epicenter of the disaster that several are still being used as command posts for the police and firefighters (whose heroic work we can never praise enough). The teachers and principals and other staff in these schools had no preparation for dealing with a catastrophe of this magnitude. They reacted partly out of their instinct to protect their children and partly out of what they knew how to do as educators.

Over and over again, the teachers told us that, without the normal orderly routines of schools and the respect students had been taught to have for the adults and one another, the children could not have been evacuated safely. Teachers lined up the kids, got them to hold hands-even carried some of the littlest ones piggyback-and led the children to safety through falling debris and black smoke so thick that only the person directly ahead was visible. One teacher saw the plane hit the World Trade Center building right where he knew his brother worked. Yet he stayed with his colleagues and the students until every child was taken home. Then he started to search for his brother.

A community responds

Parents helped, too. Many were already there-for some of the youngest children, this was only their second day in school. Other parents from the neighborhood ran to the schools to see what they could do. One parent told us he had been a Marine platoon commander in Vietnam and he'd never seen anyone perform better than the principal and teachers of his child's school. Each of these schools responded the way schools across the country would-as a community.

None of this takes away from the grief we personally feel. We lost three teachers and three star students from Washington, D.C., on the plane that hit the Pentagon-they were on their way to an awards ceremony where the children were to collect prizes for essays they had written. Other union members and loved ones of members were among the innocent and brave who perished in the fiery collapse of the twin towers. But amid all this devastation, it's important to recognize the civility and humanity demonstrated by thousands of ordinary citizens.

They came from every neighborhood to help in whatever way they could. Tourists wrote long letters of love and encouragement and posted them everywhere. And when daily life resumed-it would be difficult to call it "normal" because all Americans are forever marked by what happened-liberty never missed a beat. That is because democracy is so much a part of who and what we are.

A different world

We know that our lives and our world are changed, but whatever awaits us will not threaten this great republic. Americans will continue to find hope and inspiration in the individual acts of courage and heroism that we witnessed on September 11, and we will grow ever more appreciative of those American institutions and values that nourish us and make our nation a beacon of freedom and tolerance throughout the world. As we do this, it is worth remembering that our civic life and the development of our values rest heavily on our public schools. They are the centers of our communities; they safeguard our children and teach them not just to read and write and count and know about the world around them but also to respect others unlike themselves and to live by the rules a diverse democratic society imposes.

Yes, there is room for improvement in our schools, as in all our institutions, and we have to keep working at it. We must also count our blessings and, as we do so, give praise to the indomitable spirit of a city, to a nation that prizes its commitment to diversity, democracy, and tolerance; to a president who is working hard to lead his country in a terrible time; to a mayor who is having his finest hour; and to all the heroes who emerged in this disaster, including the teachers and principals and school staffs-not just those at ground zero but in all our public schools-who work every day to ensure America's future.