This week’s teacher spotlight is on Mrs. Branco! Mrs. Branco is one of the art teachers who works at North Arlington High School. Art isn’t the only thing Mrs. Branco does. She volunteers her time to do the World Trade Center tours in New York City. The organization she works for is called the Tribute WTC. She was emailed and asked if she wanted to conduct one of the tours because her husband worked in the South Tower on September 11th, 2001 and thankfully survived the attack.
Each tour people take is unique. There are 320 volunteers and each of them comes from a variety of areas such as: family members of victims, survivors, residents, fire department officials, police officers and many other services. Mrs. Branco begins her tour by the Fire Fighter memorial, then moves on to the survivor trees and then reviews the history of the World Trade Center. On her tour, she informs visitors about what happened on September 11th including the aftermath, some personal stories and some about any future events. She has been working with this organization for 2 ½ years. She has done over 100 tours and sometimes she even conducts two tours on Saturday.
Mrs. Branco loves that she feels a part of something when she is volunteering her time to do these tours. It’s something very dear to her. Not only does she work the tours but she also works in the gallery that they have at the memorial. She encourages people to go to the site and take a tour. You can find out more information on the tours by going to www.tributewtc.com.