Teachers lean on each other

It’s hard to imagine the feelings of helplessness and despair experienced by the young, first-year teachers from New York working at Kaua’i public schools.

Many of them got phone calls at home around 5 a.m. Hawai’i time on the morning the terrorists hit last week.

Kelly Becker’s father told her to go to work – sage advice that the fifth-grade special-education teacher at King Kaumuali’i Elementary School here took.

“I wanted to be around my kids,” she said.

Born and raised in upstate New York, near Rochester, Becker and several other first-year Kaua’i teachers attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, around 60 miles up the Hudson River from ground zero.

Tuesday in school was a difficult time, because her uncle works in the World Trade Center and she didn’t learn until that night that he was safe, that he hadn’t gone to work on that fateful day.

An older sister just started an internship as an attorney in Washington, D.C., and routinely visits many federal buildings there, including the Pentagon. It would be nearly nightfall on Kaua’i Tuesday before Becker knew her sister was unharmed. The situation was further complicated because she has been in Washington, D.C. for less than a month, so relatives didn’t know her new cellular telephone number.

Her boyfriend’s cousin works on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center, and they haven’t heard from him, said Becker, still obviously shaken from the roller coaster ride of emotions she has been on since Tuesday.

She’s happy that no one in her family was harmed, but sad because so many people died, she explained.

While hearing words like “the city will bounce back,” “you can’t keep New Yorkers down” and stirring oratory from Mayor Rudy Guiliani, she still can’t imagine people returning to work in the area that one combat veteran said resembles a bombed-out Beirut, Lebanon.

“I know people are strong” and resilient, and maybe with time and skill they’ll regain an enthusiasm about bouncing back, she said. But for her and other New York teachers on Kaua’i, major mourning continues.

“The hardest part is being so far away,” she said.

Hawai’i public schools recruited many teachers from New York state. On Kaua’i there are New York natives teaching at King Kaumuali’i, Chiefess Kamakahelei and Kalaheo. They’ve gained strength from each other and their students, peers and administrators at school, Becker said.

After most of the New Yorkers went to work Tuesday, they met that night at one’s home, ended up spending the night there and decided that school wasn’t the best place for them on Wednesday. They wanted to learn and understand what happened. “We already felt so far away,” said Becker.

They wanted to help the relief effort, give blood or something, said Becker, 23.

“It was good to talk about it,” she said of Tuesday night with her fellow New Yorkers, discussing what they were going to tell their students.

“What do you tell your students?” she asked herself, her Kaua’i teacher friends and her boyfriend who is a teacher near Poughkeepsie.

Her students are have been terrific, she said. They know she is from New York, about what happened in New York City, but on Tuesday that day’s events weren’t discussed in Becker’s portable classroom on campus.

When they all talked about what happened, their feelings and emotions, it was difficult, naturally, for them all. There were lots of tears, she said, fighting back more of her own. But the children gave her strength and understanding, she added.

Sending and receiving e-mails about the horrific events also helps, Becker said. And when she went home Tuesday night, there were seven messages on her telephone answering machine, from friends in New York City who were all right, from her parents, and from other New York teachers on Kaua’i.

This disaster, Becker stressed, is different from Hurricane ‘Iniki’s wrath, which many of her students lived through when they were 1 year old. The differences are death, murder at the hands of man, and terrorist attacks that she said were “preventable.”

There were less than five Kaua’i deaths combined in Hurricane ‘Iniki in 1992 and Hurricane ‘Iwa in 1982. Thousands are still missing and presumed dead in New York City and Washington, D.C. after Tuesday’s attacks.

The feelings of helplessness, of being thankful and yet almost guilty that no one in her immediate family was harmed, that her life continues normally while so many families had theirs disrupted, is still hard for her, Becker said.

She heard stories from friends about other friends rushing into New York City to pick up children of friends who are missing, and realizing that in some cases the children had been made instant orphans by the terrorists’ work.

With really nothing else to do Tuesday morning, Becker went to work. At around 6:15 a.m., principal Karen Liu called her classroom, asking her if she was all right, if she wanted to go home. Becker stayed.

Becker figures all teachers from New York will attend a special support group set up for grieving teachers, if for no other reason than continuing to talk about what happened and the changing feelings associated with the aftermath will help all involved. And it will be a chance for the friends to get even closer.

When the inevitable question about retaliation is asked, she shakes her head. She is still way too consumed with what happened Tuesday to think about future moves, she said.

“People want something to happen,” and with the nation and world’s rage, there must be some retaliation, she said.

Becker interviewed for a job in Hawai’i because she thought the process of the interview would be good experience for her, since she just finished up work on her masters degree in education.

Hawai’i offered the promise of different experiences, a different environment. Now she is learning so much and gaining so many new friends that she can’t imagine staying for just the length of her one-year contract, she said.

Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).