Cupcakes on the first day of school, a door-decorating contest, a Secret Santa and a free snack cart with water, soda and potato chips. These are among the morale-boosting activities devised by Catherine Sarlo, the chapter leader of IS 10 in Astoria

What began as an early-grades literacy event has turned into a schoolwide project to design a  mural for the outside of PS/IS 184, a UFT community learning school in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Like most educators in professional development sessions, teachers at PS 249 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, discuss theories and best practices. But at PS 249, teachers also get a unique opportunity to test out the strategies they learn on students right away.

Activist Velma Hill and UFT founder Albert Shanker had crossed paths in the civil rights movement. So when Hill, armed with a master’s in education from Harvard, decided she wanted to organize paraprofessionals, she approached Shanker in 1968.

Solidarity is contagious. That’s how it seems in public schools across New York City where UFT chapters are proudly proclaiming they have 100 percent union membership in their schools.

At the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, history lives behind glass. But on the museum’s lower level, in the imagiNATIONS Activity Center that opened in May 2018, Native American culture comes to life.