This year’s 2021 UFT Career and Technical Education Awards recognized educators who have shown great ingenuity and perseverance in facing the challenges created by the pandemic.
”How do you do CTE virtually?” UFT President Michael Mulgrew asked the Zoom audience at the Feb. 26 awards ceremony. “Some of our sequences automatically lend themselves to it, but others, it gets difficult.”
Issues particular to CTE, such as industry certifications and diploma endorsements requiring hands-on work, are especially difficult to achieve remotely.
Mulgrew praised the group’s resourcefulness. “The creativity we have seen is unprecedented,” he said. “No matter what’s in the way, CTE finds a way.”
In all, 82 CTE educators and advocates were recognized by the city Department of Education, the CTE Advisory Council, the UFT and industry partners.
In welcoming remarks, UFT Vice President for CTE High Schools Sterling Roberson pointed out the dedication and commitment of CTE educators who “tirelessly work to prepare our young people for success in college, career and life.”
Philip Donohue, who teaches video game design at the Academy of Innovative Technology in Brooklyn, and Tyshawn Davis, the work-based learning coordinator at the Maxine Greene HS for Imaginative Inquiry in Manhattan, both received the Municipal Credit Union Teacher of the Year Award, an industry honor, as well as Stanley Schair partnership awards.
