Brooklyn teachers who witnessed 9/11 as children reveal what they want the next generation to remember

When Americans mark 25 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Friday, Kathleen Palladino will remember the day through the eyes of a New York City 6-year-old who did not yet understand what she was seeing.Palladino was a kindergartner in Brooklyn when classmates suddenly began being called over the school PA system to go home.Eventually, her mother arrived to collect Palladino and her older sister, and as they walked home, the little girl looked toward Manhattan."It was like a dividing line," Palladino recently told Fox News Digital."From the bridge backwards was just blackness."REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: 9/11 IS JUST A HISTORY CHAPTER FOR A NEW GENERATION OF AMERICANSA view of the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Winter Garden in New York City in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

(MediaNews Group via Getty Images, File)The other side of the afternoon sky remained clear and blue."Mommy, why is the sky black?" Palladino remembers asking."She just kept squeezing my hand, and we just kept going," she said.A quarter-century later, Palladino teaches nursery school at St.

Patrick Catholic Academy in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where her 3-year-old students were born more than two decades after the attacks that shaped their teacher's childhood.She is one of several educators at the school whose memories of 9/11 stretch back to their own school days.As the nation remembers Friday, they are teaching children about an event that remains deeply personal to them but that their students know only as history.AS AMERICAN PRIDE HITS A 25-YEAR LOW, A NEW 9/11 EDUCATION PLATFORM URGES THE NATION TO NEVER FORGETA boy points towards the center of the reflecting pool at the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City.(Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images, File)Their principal, Kathy Curatolo, carries an even more personal connection — she watched one of the towers collapse from a school roof that morning, unaware her youngest brother, 31-year-old FDNY...