Roseville High School Teacher Tells How 9/11 Led Him to Minnesota and Teaching

While most people can talk theoretically about how 9/11 changed their lives, Ira Sanders, a social studies teacher at Roseville Area High School, can pinpoint it concretely.

"I always wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to give back," he said. "It was time to do what I always wanted to do."

Sanders, a native of New York, had been a commodities trader at the World Trade Center for 15 years before September 11, 2001. 

Running late for work after picking up bagels and juice for his son, he narrowly escaped being inside the World Trade Center when the planes hit.

But being outside the building didn't save him from having to outrun the crumbling struxtures, or see firefighters who rushed in but never came out.

"It's changed how I see the future," he said. "There's 9/10 and 9/12. Our children lost the innocence of the world that day. They will never know the mood of the country before 9/12."

Sanders was a lifelong New Yorker. He went to college at Hunter in New York City; his son attended public school in Washington Heights. After that day, though, he decided to move to his wife's native Minnesota, arriving in 2004.

"[After 9/11] I didn't want to be a commodity trader anymore," he said. "I couldn't walk by the World Trade Center anymore and go to work." 

Sanders didn't flee New York, though, he turned towards a profession of making a difference in people's lives. He wanted to help by being a part of the future.

"The kids keep you young. I educate people, but I learn from them, also," he said of his job. 

Sanders is in a special position: He is able to give a first hand perspective of what happened on 9/11 to his students, most of whom were seven or eight years old in 2001. Though he thinks they may see the effects, at least subconsciously, or at most in the airport, he doesn't think they aware of its full impact.

"To them it's history," he said, "to me it's a primary thing. They don't know that they were robbed of their innocence a little bit."

Sanders, an insightful, thoughtful man, doesn't seem angry. He isn't full of blame or hate. A picture of the John Lennon Memorial Central Park Mosaic "Imagine" hangs above his classroom door.

Mostly, he seems sad for his students, who will never know what their country was like eleven years ago.

"It was hate that caused 9/11, not religion," he asserted.