‘Someone is remembering your teaching’

Miller Photography Retired elementary school chapter leaders.

Miller Photography Retired Teachers Chapter Leader Tom Murphy and Director of Retiree Programs Gerri Herskowitz (right) present a proclamation to keynote speaker Bel Kaufman.

Miller Photography UFT President Michael Mulgrew addresses the group.

“I’m 100 years and six months old,” Bel Kaufman told a ballroom filled with retirees — and from there she had them rolling in the aisles.

The former teacher and author of the best-selling 1960s novel “Up the Down Staircase” stole the show at the Retired Teachers Chapter’s annual luncheon for 1,300 new retirees at the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan on Nov. 15.

At the end of her witty, touching classroom stories, she told retirees, “You remain alive in thousands of minds, in the memories of the thousands of people you have taught. Someone, somewhere is remembering your teaching. It’s a kind of immortality.”

Retirees got a different kind of pat on the back from UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who cited their volunteer work leading up to the big Ohio victory for workers’ rights.

“I talk about our retirees all the time,” he said. “And lately I’ve been calling on you more and more because I know this chapter will not back down from any fight.”

And that help, he indicated, will be needed in the ongoing struggle for a “fair and just society.”

Mulgrew called the city’s misguided attempt at education reform “a horrendous missed opportunity.”

The sad part, he said, is that schools could have done so much more than just turn out reams of paper and data in what he charged was the Department of Education’s attempt to hold teachers accountable.

Retiree John Robilotti, who served for 16 years as chapter leader at Curtis HS on Staten Island, echoed that charge.

“We have people trying to reform education who have no understanding, knowledge or expertise in the field,” he said. “They are business people who want to restore the old factory model.”

Retirees spoke again and again about their disappointments with what is happening in schools.

Eunice Detrani of PS 257 in Brooklyn, a chapter leader for 15 years of her 43-year career, noted that there was creativity in teaching when she started.

“You saw what each of your students could do and built on it,” she pointed out. “Now we’re scripted and micromanaged with all the emphasis on data.”

Looking to the future, RTC Leader Tom Murphy reassured retirees that while their pensions are guaranteed, their health benefits are not. He urged them to maintain strong ties to the union and join in ongoing efforts to protect and improve benefits and to fight for a more equitable society.

“You don’t hang your social conscience on a peg with your keys when you retire,” he said.