Around the UFT: Thursday, November 1, 2012

To improve health outcomes for both mothers and their newborn babies, the UFT Welfare Fund’s Health Advisory Committee hosted a presentation on Oct. 16 by Childbirth Connection and Emblem Health, the parent organization of GHI (the city health plan which most UFT members opt for), to share information and free resources to help ensure healthy beginnings for new babies.

Labor, educators, parents, business and faith communities all have an important role to play as the 2013 mayoral election draws near, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said during an Oct. 25 forum hosted by the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, the Amsterdam News and WBLS-FM.

Voicing their questions and concerns, and eager for updates regarding union activities on the education and political fronts, members of the UFT’s chapters for social workers and psychologists, for guidance counselors and for speech improvement teachers met with UFT President Michael Mulgrew on Oct. 22.

“The problem is paperwork,” Gabriella Mezzettoni said as she waited with seven colleagues from PS 721, the John F. Kennedy Jr. School in Elmhurst, Queens, for the start of the Meet the President gathering on Oct. 24 at UFT headquarters. “We’re doing so much paperwork it’s hard to pay attention to the kids,” she explained.

When it comes to memorabilia, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has nothing on the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame. While you can see the uniform worn by former professional baseball player Gloria Cordes-Elliott hanging in the Women in Baseball wing in Cooperstown, you can often see Cordes-Elliott herself when visiting the Staten Island Hall.

MS 390 in the Bronx hosted a Chess in the Schools tournament on Oct. 12, at which boys and girls from ages 10 to 13 representing schools in every borough engaged in a full day of competition that featured moves, countermoves, tactics and strategies leading to endgames.

Transforming the culture of a school is a tall order, but that’s precisely what PS/MS 278 Chapter Leader Jim Tierney has done with his anti-bullying work, for which the Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays of New York City awarded him its inaugural Safe Schools Leadership Award at its 32nd annual awards dinner on Oct. 15.

UFT members wore pink to school in the days leading up to the Oct. 21 Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk to raise awareness about this important health issue.

Some 200 UFT art teachers took part in curriculum discussions and hands-on activities at the New York City Art Teachers Association/UFT’s Artworks ’12 education conference on Oct. 10 at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts HS in Queens.

Larry Minetti has done many murals in the course of his 17 years as an art teacher, but he considers the wolf fantasia mural just completed at the Collegiate Institute for Math and Science in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx as “by far the best, the golden child.”

Two years after first breaking ground to build a new athletic field, around 80 members of the school community at Franklin D. Roosevelt HS gathered at the field in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn on Oct. 16 to celebrate the project’s completion with an official ribbon-cutting ceremony.