The leader of the Newtown, Connecticut, teachers' union attended the dedication of the Memorial to Fallen Educators in Emporia, Kansas Thursday.

Tom Kuroski, president of the Newtown Federation of Teachers, participated in the event at Emporia State University. The ceremony included a wreath-laying and reading of the names to be inscribed on a granite memorial.

The memorial was created by the National Teachers Hall of Fame. It will honor more than 100 American educators who lost their lives while fulfilling their educational duties, including the six Sandy Hook School educators, three educators who died on Sept. 11, 2001 and others. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan attend.

“In Newtown, the violence that ripped through Sandy Hook not only cost us the precious lives of students, colleagues and friends, but it also cost us our sense of security.  For many of us, when we returned to our schools and classrooms, we felt insecure about fulfilling our most sacred duty: teaching and nurturing our students while keeping them safe.  More than half of the fallen educators included in this memorial died during the past 14 years" said Kuroski. 

He continued, “My hope and my prayer is that this memorial will help to inspire local, state and national leaders to make school safety a top priority—and ensure that no other community, no other school, no other teacher, no other school support personnel, no other administrator, no other student, no other parent, has to go through what we went through on Dec. 14, 2012, and continue to go through each and every day. We are all Newtown.”