Evacuated children's plight hits close to home

Texas educator Carolyn Mays empathized with, and aided, every child fleeing to her school after Katrina.

Carolyn Mays, the assistant principal of Oak Creek Elementary in Houston, Texas, grew up in New Orleans and went back to visit often. When Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters devastated that city's Ninth Ward, 44 members of Mays' family lost everything. "That was our home," she says.

But she was undeterred by the endless scenes and stories of desperation in the immediate aftermath of the storm, working tirelessly to help her displaced relatives find the assistance they needed. Each evening, she recruited family members spread across the country to assemble care packages for their displaced kin.

Even in the midst of helping her family in crisis, she focused attention each workday on enrolling 43 children who fled to Oak Creek from storm-ravaged cities and towns on the Gulf Coast. With so many of her own family going through the same experience, Mays felt a special affinity for the young storm victims and hustled to ensure the school would "hang out that welcome mat."

"I feel so related to them," says Mays, a 31-year teaching veteran. "It could have been my little cousins who had to come over on a bus and stay in a shelter and start a new school. I reach out to them and introduce myself to their parents and tell them I'm family of victims."

To help the new students get settled in at Oak Creek, Mays and other staff members handed out new backpacks stuffed with school supplies to each newcomer.

Though Mays carried the double concern about displaced family at her home and displaced children at her school—especially in the chaotic weeks following the storm—her determination to help was unflagging.

"It is energizing to meet a need that might otherwise go unmet," Mays says. "These are America's children. They may have moved from one state or city to the next, but they all need our help. They need all of us—the NEA family and educators nationwide—to reach out to them."

—CINDY LONG

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