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The Challenge: After 9/11, what was most helpful to you and the students during the recovery process?

Ada Dolch: The recovery process was extremely difficult. For 4½ months, we journeyed on an arduous road. Nothing seemed right. Mentally, we were all distraught. Loud sounds made us all jump. Airplanes meant attack, so we ducked. We couldn’t remember the simplest of things. We wanted to be back in our school building, but the air quality wasn’t safe. Fear was everywhere. There was anger and there were fights. We didn’t have supplies. We didn’t have materials. Teachers who were used to having their own classrooms were now carrying their belongings from classroom to classroom.

Students began to express great pain, loss, depression, and fear. We had several social workers assigned to us, but oftentimes it seemed they needed more help than we did. They wanted to talk and we just wanted to be left alone. We wanted to take care of each other. We wanted to talk, cry, hug, and simply be close to each other.

We provided forums for the students and staff to share their feelings. Writing was a clear conduit. Working together on art projects helped. Knitting became an activity
of choice and, later on, planting in Battery Park—the place where we had sought refuge—clearly served as a healing vehicle for many.

The Challenge: As a school community, what are some of the lessons you learned that you hope other schools might take from your experience?

Ada Dolch: We learned that having an evacuation plan means nothing unless everyone is clearly aware of his or her responsibility. More importantly, the plans have to be so clearly defined and inculcated into the fabric of the school, staff, and students, that everyone can perform his or her task or take on a responsibility without guidance or direction.

We learned that we needed to sit down and take a good look at the safety plans that we had in place. Every school has a safety plan in a binder somewhere, but what value is a big, wordy plan if no one knows what it is? Now we have an evacuation plan, a lock-down plan, a “how to use a defibrillator” plan, and a plan for an in-house emergency. The more times we practice, the better prepared we can be. Still, the staff know that they must assess the situation at hand and make decisions for themselves and that everyone is expected to take on a leadership role.

Now, we have water bottles quickly available for distribution to everyone. We have food, guaranteed fresh for 5 years and edible for life, ready to go if needed. We have flashlights everywhere. I have a little box in my office that contains the names and addresses of everyone in the building with emergency contacts along with money and a few other essentials.

As a learning community, we have made a decision: we will not allow anyone or anything to take away our belief system, our values, or our goals. We discovered that we are strong, we choose to be invincible, and we will overcome. We will serve to heal, we will serve as caretakers, we will be innovators, and we will be the messengers. We will be prepared.