Trading Worlds After 9-11

It’s September 2011, the end of the summer in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and is focused on little else these days besides the start of high school.

Today is the first day of her second year at the , working as the school’s principal.

For the next nine months, her life will belong to about 160 kids and their parents and about 20 teachers and support staff. Already, her thoughts are all-consumed with things like teacher effectiveness, common core standards, staff development, compliance, scheduling, and much, much, much more.

She’s been preparing for this day the entire summer, and what she’d really love right now more than anything is a few days to breathe, relax with no worries, maybe a little more time to focus on her diet and work on regaining her once-girlish figure.

But, truth is, there’s no time for that. Gupta’s priority is her students and making sure they pass their Regents Exams so that they graduate on time.

Interestingly enough, if you would have told Gupta ten years ago that one day, she’d be working in the New York City public school system with a score of teens from Central Brooklyn, she’d laugh it off as a light-hearted joke.

A decade ago, for Gupta – a woman of East Indian background who grew up in a suburb of Maine and majored in economics – life in a cash-strapped public school setting wouldn't have seemed plausible. No, not all.

But that was ten years ago, before the first plane hit, shaking the room where she sat, in a meeting next to other financial consultants, in a building, across the street from the World Trade Center.

“A lot of people came in screaming, saying one of the twin towers had been hit, and they saw people jumping,” said Gupta. Chaos ensued, as people began evacuating her office building. Together, Gupta and two colleagues ran outside and quickly decided to jump a ferry to Staten Island.

The three of them ended up in Battery Park, almost frozen in place. In awe, they watched the side of one of the towers ripped open and engulfed in flames.

“I thought, ‘Oh, this is not good.’ But I wasn’t yet panicked,” said Gupta. “I was just in operation mode. I had a suit on, my briefcase in hand. I was still business-like, thinking, ‘Okay, what’s our next step?'

“But once I saw the building come down, and began to inhale that smoke, that’s when I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna die.’”

Covered in soot, the three joined the huge crowd of people fighting to get on the Staten Island Ferry. The first boat quickly over-boarded. Once they saw people, in desperation, literally jumping from the dock onto the boat as it pulled off, they decided to change course and instead walk over the bridge into Brooklyn.

Soon, they found themselves lost in another sea of panicked people, moving like an enormous wave toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

“While on the bridge, we looked over, and then suddenly, the other building came crashing down. It was unbelievable. We were scared for our lives. Once we got over to the other side, in Brooklyn, there was a group of Hasidic Jews passing out water to everyone. We all had a headache, I think from the smoke.”

From Brooklyn, the group tried to rent a car, but the rental place was closed so they hopped a bus to Bayonne, New Jersey. A woman on the bus whose mother was waiting to pick her up offered them a ride to a local hotel, where they all went long enough to shower and then decompress at the TGIF Restaurant across the street.

“We watched the television in the restaurant, and at that point, we could see all the debris, everything was just floating through the air.”

Once the Verrazzano Bridge re-opened, the three of them took a car to Gupta’s aunt’s house in Staten Island, until relatives and friends drove in to take them home.

Gupta returned to her work in the financial district. But, everything was different.

“It was life-changing; I felt rattled,” said Gupta.

Now, across the street from her office were massive mounds of rubble, and everyone at work all wore masks, to avoid the toxic dust. Shortly after, one-third of her staff was let go, but Gupta remained. Then, another round of lay offs took place, and another, until eventually, Gupta also was let go in February 2002.

She started looking for another job in finance. But “My heart wasn’t in it. I just really needed more time,” she said. “So I took about a year off, took French classes, art classes, visited family. I knew I needed to get back to work. But, I thought, ‘I really want to do something different, something that would bring more meaning to my life.’”

That “something different” soon presented itself, when she saw an ad on television for the New York Teaching Fellows Program. Gupta applied, was accepted and started in fall 2003.

She started teaching middle school in the Bronx while going to school at night for her master’s in education.

“And then suddenly, it hit me,” Gupta said. The fallout of 9-11 descended upon her around 2004, a delayed reaction that came rushing in. “I began experiencing a lot of anxiety and depression and angst and a major sense that the world could end at any moment.”  

But she fought hard, and pushed past it. After completing the Teaching Fellows Program in 2006, she taught a few more years, and then enrolled in the New York City Leadership Academy in 2009, a training program for principals, which she completed in 2010.

Soon after, she was offered a position to replace another principal at the Brooklyn Academy for Global Finance.

Today, as she reflects on her students, she finds irony in the fact that the very thing that drove her to education – the 9-11 tragedy – is an event of which most her students, now 13 – 17 years old, have no recollection.

“I would like for it to be a unit or topic in global history class," said Gupta. "Since my school’s focus is global finance, one of the things I want to do is build cross-cultural connections. I want them to have pen pals in Shanghai and learn more about different religions, in the context of global history. I want them to read more Islamic, Indian and Chinese authors, just really take in a world view.”

Looking back on her journey, from watching the twin towers fall only blocks from where she was standing, to running as a fugitive with her two colleagues, to beating back depression, to returning to school and starting a brand new career, in a single decade, Gupta’s life has taken many turns.

Today, she has carved out a small space of her own, with 160 kids. At this turn, she feels she can truly make a difference.

“A lot has changed for me in the last ten years since 9-11. First of all, I was 15 pounds skinnier,” she laughs.

“But it’s such an unbelievable event in world history, and we should be talking about it more,” said Gupta. “Within our society, 9-11 should be used as an opportunity for cross-cultural understanding. That’s my plan for these kids. This is my job now.”