22 Years Later, Co-Op Remembers 9/11

Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School Assistant Principal Talima Andrews-Harris remembered how, 22 years ago to the day, she arrived at her job as a first-grade teacher in Atlanta after having recently flown back south from her family’s home in Brooklyn. 

She recalled being excused from her classroom by a colleague, who let her know that she should get in touch with her New York City relatives — because, she’d soon find out, her home city had just been attacked.

That was one of eight stories shared by Co-Op staffers Monday morning during the school’s annual 9/11-focused ​“Learning to Remember” assembly. This year marked the fifth year that the 177 College St. arts magnet school has hosted the assembly. The hour-plus-long panel was organized by Co-Op history teacher Ryan Boroski, who has taught at Co-Op for the past nine years. 

A panel of eight educators joined juniors and seniors in the school’s main stage auditorium to share their memories and experiences of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The panel included Principal Paul Camarco, history teacher Ryan Boroski, English teacher Peter Scaramuzzo, band teacher Mathew Chasen, Spanish teacher Vandelina Esposito, choir teacher Harriett Alfred, Assistant Principal Talima Andrews-Harris, and theatre teacher David Scott Meikle. 

The educators shared what Boroski described as a ​“lightbulb memory” of the national terror attack. 

The educators’ experiences at the time included realizations that ​“we [America] weren’t invincible,” struggling to face the reality of ​“I didn’t know who was alive,” and the paralyzing effects of learning that change would come and ​“those days are gone.” 

Andrews-Harris, who grew up in Brooklyn, had visited her family back home in New York the week before 9/11, as she typically did every weekend back then while working as a first-grade teacher in Atlanta.

“I am New York,” Andrews-Harris said while recalling her first job at Lehman Brothers law, which was housed in Tower One of the World Trade Center. 

The morning of the tragic day, Andrews-Harris was teaching her first-grade class when a colleague interrupted offering to watch her students while suggesting she head out to make some calls home to check on her family. 

Not yet knowing of the terror attack going on, Andrews-Harris was confused and went to the school library. She recalled that just as she walked into the library she was met with the sight of a second plane hitting the second twin tower. She said the news of the incident caused her to immediately begin to panic, scream, and cry in the library. 

“I don’t even know how I got home from work that day,” she said. 

She had a cousin in the Navy who had plans to report to the Pentagon that day and another family member that was hit by tower debris after getting off of at a nearby train station. Luckily Andrews-Harris’ family members were all safe.

Days after, Andrews-Harris had hopes to take a plane back home to her family but they would not let her due to safety concerns with flying. She wasn’t able to get to back home to Brooklyn until October and while flying over New York, she said she could see the rubble from the fallen towers. 

To this day Andrews-Harris says she is still impacted and has since become a very cautious flyer.

Students sat silently in the auditorium as educators shared their stories. The current high schoolers grew up in a ​“post 9/11 world” and therefore many have only learned of the historic event from social media. 

In Boroski’s social studies class he put together a lesson for his students days in advance that touched on the video and picture recordings from the day of 9/11, the 2019 passage of a bill that ensured support to the 9/11 First Responders Fund, and the unity and division that came as result of the terror attack. 

“So much of their life is the way it is because of 9/11,” Boroski said. 

One of those largest changes that came as a result were the enhancements to airport security systems, Boroski said, while recalling traveling to Disney World at eight years old and walking through a single metal detector and his family walking him up to the the gates. 

“Those days are gone,” he said.

Each year Boroski aims to get new teachers to share their personal stories with the students during the third morning period. 

At the start of the Monday assembly Boroski asked the upperclassmen what they know about 9/11 or learned from their families over the years. Students shared that the death toll from the event was in the thousands, that two other hijacked planes crashed into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, that the site of the former Twin Towers is known as Ground Zero, and that nearby places like Connecticut had first responders dispatched to the 9/11 site for extra reinforcements. 

Principal Paul Camarco shared his story about living in Southern California at the time to attend law school. 

While he was sleeping that morning, Camarco was woken up to a call from his best friends who told him to turn on his TV. He did not have a TV in his apartment and had to go to the complex’s fitness center to see the first plane crash into the first tower. 

Due to his school being in the path of all San Diego flights, typically he would hear planes fly above the school every five minutes. However, after the attack Camarco said the skies were quiet for three or four days. 

He had to fly for the first time back to Connecticut after the death of his grandfather and upon arrival at the airport he said he was met with soldiers with machine guns and K9s. 

“It was very eerie being in an airport,” he recalled. 

Again in Hartford when his plane landed he was met with state police with K9s who helped with screening flight passengers. 

“It not only changed me as a person but us as a country,” Camarco told the students. 

“I hope you all get to experience the togetherness we got to experience,” he added. 

Scaramuzzo is also a New York native from the Bronx and was a student at UConn at the time. Esposito had just had her newborn daughter weeks before the incident. Boroski was in the 6th grade and recalled his mother packing up her minivan in hopes of finding refuge in Vermont with other family. Chasen was a sophomore in high school who lacked the emotional capacity to deal with such tragedy but ​“couldn’t escape the shock and awe” of it all. Meikle at the time was a professional actor in Denver and despite being ​“horrified and devastated” went to rehearsal the day after the incident to provide his cast with comfort during the difficult times.

Alfred was a Co-Op teacher at the school’s former site on Orange Street, teaching her class at the time the attack occurred. 

At the start of her morning class a student asked if she had heard about the plane crash, but she assumed the student was joking. 

However when she went to the next-door English classroom that had its TV on, she watched the first plane hit and thought to herself, ​“What a tragic accident.” 

As she continued to watch she saw the second plane hit on live TV and thought to herself, ​“This is not an accident, we’re under attack.” 

Throughout the school day she recalled being anxious but having to help her students keep calm who were freaking out due to having family living in New York, she said. 

The school phone was ringing non-stop with calls from worried parents. 

Throughout the school day she worked with her ​“heart torn,” she said. 

She said Co-Op came together the only way it knew to, through the arts, with an assembly the following day and gave students a glimpse of songs they sang together like ​“Still I Rise” and ​“We Are The World.” 

Students clapped along as Alfred sang verses of the songs at Monday’s assembly. 

She emphasized to the students the power of the arts and that ​“art is always called upon in times of tragedy.” 

After the panelist shared their stories one student asked, ​“How do you get over something like this?” Camarco said the goal is to not get over the tragedy but to remember its takeaways to help the country to move forward. 

“It’s important to get students together so that we can speak to them about our real world experiences and not just rely on history in a text book,” Camarco said. ​“This makes history come alive.” 

After students were dismissed from the assembly on Monday, students returned to their classes. In one classroom of 10 – 15 seniors, students shared that for some of them find it ​“hard to connect to 9/11 because we weren’t even thought of.” 

One student said they hope to learn more about the historic incident in history classes to avoid the narrative they’ve been raised on that 9/11 is just ​“a day you don’t speak of.”

“As a kid all they told us was don’t say today’s date,” the student said. ​“We only ever learn about 9/11 on 9/11.”

Another student said they enjoyed hearing from educators they don’t often hear from.

Others added they would like to learn about the incident by watching videos rather than just hearing about it in the future. 

Several students rejected the comparison made by staffers that the Covid pandemic was ​“this generation’s 9/11.”

“I don’t think a disease and 9/11 are comparable,” one student said, arguing that the comparison diminishes the tragedy behind 9/11.

When asked what would help the students better connect with the historic moment they weren’t around to experience, the students suggested they get the chance to learn the reasons behind the attack, or have a panel of students’ parents to share their stories, or that they be able to take a trip to the national 9/11 museum site. 

One student argued against the narrative also shared by staffers that 9/11 brought unity to the country, because of the growth in Islamophobia and xenophobia after 9/11. The student asked, ​“When you guys say America came together, who exactly do you mean?”

Others concluded with suggestions to have more relevant history curriculums that replace lessons on the industrial revolution or World War I with lessons about 9/11 and other more recent historic events that directly impact students today.