The leadership skills, acuity and tenacity of classroom educators were on display at the Spring Education Conference, where representatives of four teacher-led initiatives took to the stage of the giant Hilton ballroom for a morning panel on New York City Innovations in Education to discuss their work.

Two teachers from IS 220, a large middle school in Sunset Park, talked about the new career ladder positions created in the 2014 contract. They said that, as model teachers, they had to earn the staff’s trust. “We started by just visiting each other’s rooms,” said Noreen Gillespie. “That created a buzz, and new teachers started coming in.” Slowly, she said, other teachers began to ask, “Can I see you model that?”

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Jonathan Fickies

It wasn’t easy to overcome their colleagues’ fears of being judged and evaluated, said Gillespie’s colleague Matthew Vanderlee. But when peers are observing each other, he said, it fosters a different dynamic. Teachers can acknowledge their weaknesses and ask for help, he said, as well as contribute their strengths to the collective of teachers.

“As a team,” said Vanderlee, “we really do make that golden teacher, that highly effective teacher.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who was the panel’s moderator, asked teachers from two schools in the Progressive Redesign Opportunity Schools for Excellence (PROSE) program, another product of last year’s contract, about why the program was a good fit for their schools. John McCrann, the chapter leader at Harvest Collegiate HS in Union Square, said pioneering teachers at his school launched a “grassroots effort” to get the staff to become the agents of innovation. It is a far cry from relying on “one philanthropist or one mayor” to dispense education reform. “This is a program for schools that are ready,” he said.

Betty Nieves, the chapter leader at the School of Integrated Learning in Crown Heights, gave the example of two teachers at her school combining their 6th-grade classes, with 40 students in one class and 10 who needed extra help in the other, in order to address the particular needs of their students. “We needed support for that,” she said.

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Jonathan Fickies

The union took criticism for condoning a class that exceeded contractual limits, Mulgrew noted, but it worked because the experiment was initiated by teachers with a precise educational goal in mind. “There were teachers on the front line really dealing with it,” he said.

Teachers know what barriers students face, and the community school model helps the school address these needs so the students are ready to learn, said Brenda Shufelt, the librarian at Harlem’s PS 30, one of the UFT’s 24 Community Learning Schools. Teachers, parents and staff at her school conducted a joint assessment of student needs and then examined what community resources were available. Crucial in that effort, Shufelt noted, was the school’s resource coordinator, a funded, full-time position.

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Jonathan Fickies

Joe Sicilian of Curtis HS, a Community Learning School on Staten Island, said school-based staff are ahead of teacher education institutions in recognizing the need for wraparound community services in high-poverty schools. “The UFT is way out in front,” Sicilian said, but the union must make the city and the state aware that community schools need time and resources to do their work.

In the city’s 94 Renewal schools, which have “the highest-needs students of any schools in New York City,” there is pressure to make rapid progress, Mulgrew said. But, the two Renewal school teachers on the panel noted that the renewal process takes time. Kate Ottaviani from Flushing HS, which was targeted for closure under Mayor Bloomberg, told the audience, “Our first few staff meetings were painful.” Teachers feared being attacked for student shortcomings, she said. But the faculty persisted in examining student work and learning to talk about it. “We took it slowly, and we built trust,” Ottaviani said.

At PS/MS 42 in Far Rockaway, a Renewal school that is still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Sandy, teacher John Krattinger acknowledged, “We have more baggage than they handle at the JFK terminal.” But, he said, the staff has learned resilience.

“We’re a strong staff, and we will not be stopped,” he said.