I am not sure why it has taken me a year to get back to this blog. A year ago I was preparing for my sabbatical and planning to take time away, during a school year, for the first time in my 35-year independent school career. I was also very focused on writing during that sabbatical, and after. Which I did. But not here. I have no explanation. But, here I am back at the start of my 36th year in independent schools in the New York TriState area or the San Francisco Bay area.

On this 22nd anniversary of September 11, 2001, I feel contemplative. It feels like just yesterday that we were all navigating a typical and gorgeous Tuesday morning in Westchester County, NY, just north of the city. Our Parents Association was meeting in the cafeteria. We were in the second week of classes since school never starts before Labor Day on the East Coast. In fact, it was probably only the fourth day of actual classes that morning. In this sleepy commuter suburb of New York there were zero degrees of separation between the events unfolding in lower Manhattan and our school community: spouses of employees, parents of students, siblings, neighbors, cousins, they were all connected in some way.

I remember sitting in utter disbelief watching the news, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the events, while also ministering to colleagues looking for family, and watching parents come in and eyeball their children during the school day. Some brought them home, but many did not. Despite multiple losses in the community, we had 100% attendance on September 12. Parents felt school was the safest place for their children to be, where they knew we would not allow access to news and where children could just be children, doing their jobs of attending school.

That is the ultimate promise of an independent school: that children will be known and loved for who they are. IT helped us then. It still helps us today.

May we never forget that day.