- Who We Are
- Where We Stand
- Our Rights
- Our Benefits
- Our Chapters
- Guidance Counselors
- Hearing Education Services
- Lab Specialists
- Occupational / Physical Therapists
- Paraprofessionals
- Retired Teachers
- School Nurses
- School Secretaries
- Social Workers & Psychologists
- Speech Improvement
- Teachers Assigned
- Other DOE Chapters
- Charter School Chapters
- Non-DOE Education Chapters
- UFT Providers
- Federation of Nurses
- United Cerebral Palsy
- Get Involved
- Teaching
- News
Topics in the News:
member spotlight
The school community at PS 57 on Staten Island was proud — but hardly surprised — when science teacher Patricia Lockhart won the 2011-2012 Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators on April 10.
It started years ago, a case of love at first sight. Eileen Winslow went to visit her sister-in-law, a paraprofessional, in her classroom one day. “I fell in love with the kids and went to the Board of Education and filled out all the paperwork,” Winslow said. So began her career as a para 22 years ago; now she is the matriarch of her school community and her large family clan.
Working with just one public health aide, McMorrow provides nursing services to nearly 1,900 students at IS 234 in Gravesend, Brooklyn.
She went out for a chicken wrap and came back a lifesaver. Cassandra Byrd-Scolaro, a 4th-grade teacher at PS 17, was at a local Williamsburg restaurant for lunch just before noon on March 21 when she heard a commotion. A waitress had just broken into a bathroom stall, revealing the body of a lifeless young woman.
Gold stars for jobs well done may thrill the little ones, but for middle school students, stars don’t cut it. That’s been the experience of Chapter Leader Jeffrey Williams of PS/MS 37 in the Bronx. But one imaginative teacher, Helena Itak, has come up with a solution that has kids so engaged that there are no serious behavior incidents in her classroom.
It was a party atmosphere at UFT headquarters on Feb. 27 as Ann Kessler, one of the founders of the union, was honored at her 95th birthday celebration. "I've been involved with the union for 60 years," Kessler said. "I was elected chapter chair of my school, then Al Shanker asked me to run as district leader ... 60 years later, here I am."
Teaching men and women over 18 who are in conflict with the criminal justice system, Byass belongs to a non-DOE chapter, the Consortium for Worker Education. This non-profit agency is an arm of the New York City Central Labor Council, created to provide all New Yorkers access to career training programs. His site is the Osborne Association in the Bronx.
They look like images from a super-powerful telescope aimed at the sky, rendered in radiant bursts of color. They are fractals: geometric descriptions of natural phenomena that do not conform to Euclidean geometry. Thanks to the work of math teacher Bryan Stern, students at Brooklyn’s IS 259 had their fractal work on display at a Bay Ridge fine art gallery.
District 75 paraprofessional Peña has worked in hospital classrooms for nine years and currently works at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn.
Dozens crowded the union’s grievance department on Jan. 24 for the dedication of a conference room in memory of Helen Ann Doughty, a special representative whose passion was fighting for the rights and dignity of UFT members.
Having worked his way up from pot washer to executive chef, Christopher Burgos knows his way around a kitchen. Now he’s getting a feel for the classroom.
A physical therapist for 16 years, Bahr has been practicing at Manhattan’s PS 87 for five years and this year travels to neighboring PS 9 and PS 452 to work there as well.
“There is a sweet spirit in this place,” Dr. Cornel West, dressed in his trademark three-piece suit, pocket watch and scarf, told the packed audience of faculty, staff and students from Harlem’s Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts and Frederick Douglass Academy II on Dec. 5. The Princeton University professor urged students to lead an examined life and to “love learning.”
Young UFT members just finding their union voice and longtime activists without whom the UFT would not be what it is were honored with awards at the Nov. 6 Teacher Union Day event that celebrates the contributions of the union’s own members.
In her third year as a counselor, Sandoval currently works at the East New York Middle School of Excellence in Brooklyn.
A 15-year member of the UFT’s Lab Specialists Chapter, Molinari, who works at Staten Island’s Curtis HS, talks about what she does in a typical school day and how she makes a difference.
Student Shemesh DeLeon, the deputy commander of the Air Force Junior ROTC at the Brooklyn Franklin K. Lane Campus, gets to school before 7 a.m. to raise the flag and practice drills — left face, right face, port arms, carry arms — with his unit, looking sharp in his blue uniform.
Tradition and technology play well together in Carrie Patterson’s high school English classes at the East Bronx Academy for the Future. Patterson has banished the scourge of all English teachers from her classroom: gone are the stacks of essays, book reports, tests, quizzes, journals and notebooks that teachers have been lugging back and forth from school since the discovery of papyrus.
Howard Sandau, registered Nurse in the Surgical/Intensive Care Unit at Lutheran Medical Center, Brooklyn, and member of the Federation of Nurses/UFT, shares his work life providing care to patients who are critically injured, either from gunshot wounds or stabbings, or in critical condition from surgical emergencies.
Put together Newtonian physics with clinical psychology, sustainable materials and industry experts — and kids are going to have a blast in Scott Hendstrand’s class. Witness the teenagers engaged in the science suite at the Brooklyn School of Collaborative Studies, planning, building, experimenting, discussing, laughing, pondering.
Resources for: