When our school director came into my classroom at 10:30 am on September 11th, I was in the middle of a math lesson with my eighth graders. "We've been attacked. The World Trade Center is a pile of rubble. The Pentagon has been hit. We think there are going to be more. We don't know who did it. Parents are coming in to pick up their children. Let them go." I nodded, slack jawed, turned to the class and continued with my lesson. Fifteen minutes later, halfway through a sentence, the magnitude of the event registered in the recesses of my brain. I shut down mentally. "That's all for today." I said to the class, their confused faces blithely unaware of the morning's events. I stepped into the hallway and flagged down our Dean of Students. "Do you want me to tell them?" I asked, and was glad when she told me that she would be visiting each classroom during the next period to deliver the news. I didn't know what I would say to them. How do you tell a group of 13-year-olds from New York City that unknown assailants had destroyed their city's two largest buildings? The idea of the World Trade Center lying in ruins evaded my comprehension. What would it mean to them?

I monitored the hallways during the next hour, directing parents to classrooms and comforting students. I watched our school director put her hand on a crying child's shoulder. "Don't worry, sweetheart. You're in the safest place that you could be right now. Go back to class." I shuddered. A plane swept loudly over our school. I locked eyes with another teacher in the hallway: was it theirs or ours? And who were "they"? The air was heavy with our unspoken fears. Were our families and friends safe? Would there be more attacks? How long would we be asked to remain in the school? We embraced and went on our way. I wonder now how many times that scene played itself out in New York City classrooms that day, as courageous teachers and administrators put their fears aside to do what they do best: care for our city's children.

Amazingly, our teachers continued to teach, and the class discussions were amazing. "But what can we do?" one stunned humanities teacher queried, the question as indicative of her own need to make sense of the situation as much as it was an attempt to focus the bubbling student discourse. "I think that we should find out who they are and sit down to talk to them," quipped Sergio, an extremely energetic eighth grader, "I don't think that we should fight them right away. That doesn't solve anything. We should talk to them and find another solution to the problem." They were words straight out of our school's conflict resolution curriculum. The irony was overwhelming.

One of my students, Alex, a wizard with computers and a dry sense of humor indicative of savvy far beyond his thirteen years, was the information lifeline at our small, alternative school on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He monitored the global and travel updates stoically on his portable radio. "All of the number and some of the letter trains are running in Manhattan. The ferries are running, but only to carry the bodies over to Jersey." His matter of fact tone made the whole nightmare more unbelievable: one of my students was talking about carrying bodies across the river on the boat that I take to work everyday. What were the implications for their lives? Many of their homes are less than twenty blocks from ground zero. They now see bullet holes and graffiti in local storefront windows owned by Americans of Middle Eastern descent. They bear witness to the hate crimes in their neighborhoods. Their pain often manifests itself as anger: towards countries, faceless terrorists and each other. Just yesterday, one of my students, a bright, quiet boy, became so frustrated with another student's standard adolescent jibes that he punched a brick wall and broke his hand. His father worked in World Trade Center Building 7.

They ache, as we all ache. For the loss of lives and the uncertainty of the days that lie ahead. Their words and artwork sing of their search for peace; pictures of planes embedded in flame engulfed buildings and bodies falling from the sky punctuate our school's memorial wall. I marvel, incredulous at their desire to move forward and make change, inspired by their capacity to care in the face of such tremendous grieving. "To the victims of the World Trade Center," wrote one student, "Rest in peace. We will not forget you. We love you."