Brooklyn Steam Center Navy Yard students show off a 3D printer and a model they made.
The booths featuring the skills of the city’s career and technical education (CTE) high schools and programs were the highlight of the Spring Education Conference’s exhibit hall.
Queens Technical HS students offered a hands-on demonstration of therapeutic massage. Students from Urban Assembly School of Health Careers checked blood pressure. Culinary arts students from Food and Finance HS and Long Island City HS were back with their always-popular sweet and savory treats. Students and staff from Tottenville HS’s Dental Laboratory Technology program brought to the fair a sunglasses-adorned head with its mouth open wide to show off its pearly whites.
Dental program students from Tottenville HS on Staten Island are dressed to drill as they pose with their teacher, Joseph Caputo.
It was the first time Nicole Manning, a teacher at PS 21 in the Bronx, had visited the exhibit hall. “But I would definitely come back,” she said. Manning said she was going to tell her school colleagues about the Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry, a K-8 STEM program that she learned about at the fair.
Andrea Keller, a teacher at PS 96 in the Bronx, said the exhibits opened her eyes to the wide array of programs within CTE. “There’s a lot of stuff I would have never known about,” she said.
‘Meeting students’ needs’ is what it’s all about
UFT President Michael Mulgrew says reducing class size and paperwork are the keys to moving the public schools forward.
Spring Education Conference Town Hall
The UFT’s Spring Education Conference began with a panel discussion called “Speak Up” at which a half-dozen teachers spoke about what New York City public educators and students need to thrive.