When Rita Fattorusso invites one of her prekindergarten students to the front of the class to lead morning exercises, the other students pay strict attention. If they don’t, they’ll miss their classmate’s instructions: He uses American Sign Language to tell them to do eight jumping jacks, mimicking the action and counting out the number eight on his fingers.

When nearly 4,000 paraprofessionals were threatened with termination in the spring of 2009 for failing to meet certification requirements, the UFT went into high gear to save their jobs. The union held informational meetings in 940 schools and in each borough to help paraprofessionals understand what documentation or certification requirements they were missing and what they had to do.

Harlem Week is special for Charity Phalo-Davis. A teacher at the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice in Morrisania, she strolled through the yard at PS 175 in Harlem with her husband, Quincy, and their 2-year-old son during the event’s Children’s Festival on Aug. 18.

Elise Murphy, a Staten Island parent of children with disabilities, has heard so many “shocking and devastating stories” from other parents, she says they don’t surprise her anymore.

When Johanna Pontillo makes her once-a-month trips to Atlantic City, she always “bets the max” on the casino poker machines.

"Your art journey begins here.”

That message from Amie Robinson to her students is posted on her classroom door. And for many of those students, that journey has taken their artwork from the classroom at PS 77, a District 75 school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Museum and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.