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'Look where we are today'

1,100 celebrate UFT activism at annual ceremony

by Ellie Spielberg | published November 24, 2011

Miller PhotographyUFT President Michael Mulgrew welcomes everyone to the 51st annual Teacher Union Day celebration.

It was their moment, whether they were young UFT members just finding their union voice or longtime activists without whom the UFT would not be what it is.

What the union is, in addition to its everyday function as an advocate for the city’s public school students and educators, said UFT President Michael Mulgrew in his opening remarks at the Nov. 6 Teacher Union Day, is a national symbol of hope for workers whose rights are under attack.

The UFT will answer the call for help on behalf of all workers, Mulgrew said, “whether the fight is local or across the country in places like Wisconsin and Ohio, where governments try to take away collective-bargaining rights.”

Mulgrew praised both the union’s in-service members and a special group of members in the Retired Teachers Chapter for never sitting back but instead organizing, lobbying and going out to communities wherever workers are under siege.

Cogen winner Gentile an architect of professional development outreach

Miller PhotographyRecipient Aminda Gentile, who recently retired as UFT vice president and director of the Teacher Center, with UFT President Michael Mulgrew.

“You’re seeing the person who built the foundation for the future of our school system,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew when introducing Aminda Gentile, winner of the Charles Cogen Award, the union’s highest honor.

The recently retired Gentile, who began teaching in elementary school in 1966 and subsequently worked as a professional developer for many years, rose to become the director of the UFT Teacher Center in 1993 and then the union’s vice president for education starting in 2004.

Known for her diplomacy, grace, quiet authority and “amazing ability to have conversations with people who don’t understand that it’s all about our children’s education and to get them to realize that,” as Mulgrew said, Gentile was one of the architects of the union’s extensive professional development outreach.

In that role she led the charge against misusing high-stakes tests, and promoted education reforms that inform instruction, elevate the teaching profession and deepen support on the school level.

Gentile’s reach went far beyond the city, where she oversaw Teacher Center sites at 350 schools. Nationally renowned as an expert on educational reform, she was a frequent guest speaker at conferences across the country, working closely with AFT locals.

“She’s brilliant, an educator who also educated me, helping me grow professionally,” retired Teacher Center staffer Esta Heitner told the New York Teacher. “She worked with over 300 people and yet we all felt we were individuals.”

“Aminda is an educational visionary who inspired excellence in everyone around her,” said Mary Diaz, a former Teacher Center assistant director.

Gerri Herskowitz, a former longtime Teacher Center colleague who now heads the UFT Welfare Fund retiree programs, said that “Aminda gave us the opportunity to become leaders in our own right. She’s been an asset to the entire city in her belief that professional development is the way to help teachers in the often impossible situation they find themselves in.”

At the podium, Gentile said she was “one lucky woman, doing work that I love with talented, smart, kind people devoted to making a difference.”

Then, in collaborative style that was vintage Gentile, she asked her coworkers to stand and be recognized.

The union had its very beginnings with such a battle, when 51 years ago almost to the day, the fledgling UFT led its first strike for the right of teachers to collectively bargain.

“And look where we are today,” Mulgrew said to cheers and applause, looking out at the 1,100 people filling the immense ballroom at Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria.

The courage to prevail was reflected in different ways among the award winners.

UFT Secretary Michael Mendel, who emceed the event for the first time, spoke about how just a few people can make tremendous change, and asked the union’s founding members present to stand and be recognized.

The union’s highest honor, the Charles Cogen Award, went to Aminda Gentile. The recently retired UFT vice president for education and director of the Teacher Center was lauded for her longtime championing of high-quality education and upholding the highest professional standards [see story on page 20.]

“The road I took to get here was a very long road,” Gentile said. “I am one lucky woman, doing work that I love with talented, smart, kind people devoted to making a difference.”

UFT Bronx District 7 Representative Patricia Filomena won the Jules Kolodny Award. Filomena referred to union founder Kolodny, saying, “What I share with him is a commitment to workers deserving dignity and fairness.”

It seems that Judy Gerowitz, the UFT Brooklyn District 21 representative and winner of the David Wittes Award, has union roots that go back to before she was born. Her grandmother, a garment worker, was arrested during a protest after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911.

Gerowitz’s acceptance speech included a list of work that UFTers do everyday that had the audience roaring.

The sight of a Labrador retriever taking center stage was an unusual one at the ceremony, but the guide dog’s owner, Matthew Brown, is also unusual.

The Brooklyn PS 36 teacher, a winner of the Sidney Harris Awards, has a unique connection to his special needs students because of his blindness. He sees past all labels to create a level playing field for his students.

Fellow Harris Award winner was Liz Truly, a staff lawyer who has devoted herself to advocating for students with disabilities.

“The UFT has been on the right side of all battles about the rights of students with disabilities,” Truly said, adding that one of the rewards of her job “is working with smart committed people every day.”

Backer/Scheintaub Award winner Washington Sanchez, a Queens special representative, spoke about all the colleagues who inspire him, including seasoned teachers who are just as enthusiastic about teaching as when they graduated from college.

Fellow winner Marquis Harrison, one of the union’s newest activists, was a chapter leader before he was tenured.

“I always keep in mind the saying, ‘Without struggle, there is no progress,’” said Harrison, who works at Manhattan’s Frederick Douglass Academy I.

The Audrey Chasen Award, named for a teacher who died in the crossfire of a drug battle, went to Lila Ezra, the director of the union’s Member Assistance Program and coordinator of counseling for its Victim Support Program.

“If there is a tragedy at any one of the city’s 1,600 public schools, Lila is at the front door,” said UFT Staff Director Ellie Engler.

“Colleagues say [Chasen] lived every day as a hero — fearless, devoted,” Ezra said. “I see those traits in all of you whenever I see you facing tragedy in your schools or in your private lives.”

Retirees honored for activism across the country

Miller PhotographyMarsh/Raimo Award Winners (front, from left) Barbara Waldmann, Betty Gottfried, George Caulfield, Katrina Foye, Khiera Kersey-Heggs, Monique Greene, Nelson Lucena and Patricia Crowley, and (second row, from left) Frances Brown and Elizabeth Perez, with (top row, from left) Engler, Director of Legislation and Political Action Paul Egan, Retired Teachers Chapter Leader Tom Murphy and Mulgrew.

They pulled up stakes, kicked complacency to the curb, bid adieu to the Big Apple and spread out in cities and towns across the country to live among strangers.

And for the incredible work they did to protect workers’ endangered rights in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, a group of UFT Retired Teachers Chapter members — no strangers to wearing out shoe leather in the name of labor — was honored with a special Marsh/Raimo Award to thundering applause.

“What I found most wonderful was all unions working together,” honoree Barbara Waldmann told the New York Teacher after receiving her plaque with 10 fellow activists.

Waldmann and teachers from across the country worked alongside members of all manner of public- and private-sector trade unions in Toledo, Ohio. The same was true for volunteers elsewhere.

The daughter of a New York City firefighter, the former Tottenville HS teacher mourns a good number of her students who became firefighters and perished during 9/11.

So Waldmann was sure to seek out Toledo firefighters “who had worked the pile at Ground Zero to give them a big thank you from Staten Island,” she said.

No matter the state they worked in, volunteers imported their well-honed organizing skills to phone banks, home visits, candlelight vigils and whatever forms of protest that local citizens organized.

“People in Eau Claire, Wis., were just amazed when they learned we’d come all the way from New York City,” said honoree Frances L. Brown, who fought for workers’ collective-bargaining rights in that rural town outside of Madison.

“The reason we came is that you’re our union brothers and sisters, and we’re fighting the same battle,” Brown told them.

Word spread and hospitality abounded.

Still, it was hard work, Brown said, knocking on doors at homes with opinions that were sometimes in direct opposition to those of union workers.

“But it wasn’t our job to convince them, it was our job to battle Gov. Scott Walker, on behalf of all workers,” Brown said.

See more photos in the "Teacher Union Day 2011" gallery.