around the uft

Graduation day

Feb 14, 2008 12:05 PM

In caps and gowns, 30 of the city’s speech teachers — with new master’s degrees in communication disorders — were honored at a graduation ceremony held at the UFT’s Manhattan headquarters on Jan. 17. It was good news for the city’s schoolchildren and for these devoted teachers, who became students while maintaining their daily workload. Their accomplishment also was good news for UFT and for Western Kentucky University, which have collaborated in providing an excellent graduate degree program for nontraditional students. The degrees were conferred by Barbara Burch, who serves as the university’s provost and as vice president of academic affairs. Before the pomp and circumstance, UFT President Randi Weingarten and Vice President Aminda Gentile extended their congratulations and delivered their remarks. It was an especially proud day for Virginia Hill, who coordinates the UFT Teacher Center Speech Program. Since the inception of the degree program three years ago, 90 UFT speech teachers have graduated. With their crisp new diplomas and a deeper knowledge of their specialty, they bring hard-won, top-notch skills into the city’s schools. “Our UFT-DOE collaborative program supports each speech teacher during the school day through their excellent supervision and coaching,” Speech Improvement Chapter Leader Mindy Karten Bornemann said. She also noted that the Teacher Center’s Hill, Edward Sweeney, Juanita Dunbar and Angel Tapia “work with our members so they can get through this difficult degree.