I was an assistant principal in charge of security for a 3600-student high school in the Bronx, New York during the 9-11 event. After several days of disbelief, I was able to take some time to reflect on the heroism of my colleagues at the school site-the teachers, school aides, paraprofessionals, custodians, cooks, volunteers and others. From coast to coast, school personnel stayed with other people’s children while our own children were also in a school building somewhere.

As the events were unfolding, there were rumors of planes crashing into school buildings, thankfully those rumors were unfounded.  Yet, despite the confusion and uncertainty, school site personnel were cool, calm, collected and everyone’s primary concern was the safety of our students.  Once again, we have a national emergency with the Corona virus and teachers especially are hard at work assuring that children are being cared for and educated despite the uncertainty and fear gripping our nation. Other school site personnel are assuring that during this crisis kids are being fed and are attempting to provide other services that our kids desperately need. School site personnel are heroes not just during national crisis’ but every single day. And we, the richest most powerful nation in the world have many teachers working a second job to make ends meet and having to dig into their own pockets to provide basic supplies for our children.  We are better than this and we can and must do better to provide a livable wage for our education workers.