New York TeacherFebruary 5, 2015
Volume LVI, Number 6
Cover Stories
Cuomo pushes corporate ed plan that blames teachers
In his Jan. 21 State of the State address, Gov. Andrew Cuomo embraced the corporate reform agenda for education with a vengeance. He called for raising the cap on charter schools, extending teachers’ probationary period from three to five years, putting struggling schools into “receivership” and basing half a teacher’s evaluation on student test scores.
The governor used his address, which was combined this year with his executive budget, to blame high school teachers for failing to graduate students ready for college and to blame elementary and middle school teachers for failing to get students to pass new and harder ELA and math tests.
Success Charter Schools CEO Eva Moskowitz and anti-tenure crusader Campbell Brown cheered the governor’s proposals, but many public school teachers were incensed.
“The governor’s speech served warmed-up Bloomberg leftovers,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “He ignores the real problems and instea…
Delegates urged to expand social media campaign
UFT President Michael Mulgrew asked delegates at the Delegate Assembly on Jan. 14 to encourage their colleagues to use social media to show how Governor Cuomo’s proposals on education would be destructive to public schools, educators and students.
Teaching reading is still rocket science
What does good reading instruction look like? It would be so nice if it were easy to say.
Latest News
Moral Mondays come to New York State
The Moral Mondays movement came to New York State on Jan. 12 as about 1,000 students, parents, advocates and union leaders from New York City and across the state converged on the state Capitol to demand fair and equitable funding for public schools.
Fariña puts superintendents back in charge
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced on Jan. 22 the end of the 55 school networks created by the Bloomberg administration and the introduction of a new structure that gives greater oversight and responsibility to superintendents.
Global inequality is increasing
Just 1 percent of the world’s population holds nearly half of all wealth, and their share is growing.
Unions aim to stop ‘fast track’ on trade
Labor unions joined with progressive lawmakers, consumer advocates, environmentalists, and social justice and human rights lobbyists to launch a campaign against trade legislation that would allow the president and Congress to speed approval of free trade agreements.
Majority of students now get subsidized lunches
More than half of all U.S. public school students now receive free or reduced-price lunch, a new analysis of 2013 federal data reveals.
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Feature Stories
Read all about it!
[[nid:87461; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; styleName:large]][[nid:87462; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; float: right;]]In a kindergarten classroom at PS 112 in East Harlem, six children are gathered on the rug with their teacher, who is holding out a handmade book that they’ve written together as a group.
“We counted four words, so our mouths have to say four words when we read this page,” she reminds them. “Do you see any sight words on this page?”
Down the hall, another group of kindergartners is repeating the sound of the letter D, pairing it with a swoop of their arms for emphasis.
“What part of our mouth helps us make the sound of the letter D?” their teacher asks. On the other side of the room, a second teacher meets individually with a student; together, they leaf through a book of pictures illustrating D words and then…
Making math relevant
As a math teacher at International Community HS in the South Bronx, Aristides Julmarx Galdones Uy hears a frequent question from skeptical students: “When am I going to use this in the real world?”
Where math goes to get cool
Forget what you think you know about math: At the National Museum of Mathematics in Manhattan, it’s not something you work on with pencil and paper.
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Member Spotlight
What I Do
What I Do: Vasilios Tselios, senior occupational therapist
For five years, Vasilios Tselios taught students with autism to self-regulate at PS 177/The Robin Sue Ward School in Queens.
Around the UFT
Around the UFT
Retiree tutors volunteer at Community Learning Schools
UFT retirees are volunteering in a new tutoring program designed to strengthen the basic literacy and math skills of struggling students in two of the UFT’s Community Learning Schools.
Your Rights and Benefits
Know Your Rights
Absences for pedagogues
Teachers and other pedagogues are credited with one day of “sick leave” on the 16th of each month of the school year, or 10 days for a full school year of work.
Opinions
President's Perspective
Cuomo's out of touch
Governor, hundreds of teachers across the city and state have invited you to visit their classrooms to see how education works on the ground and what our kids need in order to succeed. You haven’t responded. Apparently you’re afraid of teachers.
VPerspective
Why we organize
Constantly organizing new members is critical to the health of every union, and the UFT is no exception. Unions must either grow or decline; a union that is not expanding is in trouble.
Opinion
Common sense restored
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s long-awaited announcement of the closing of the school networks created by Joel Klein is a milestone worthy of celebration. It is a decisive break with an organizational approach that, however well-meaning, was designed to fail.
Opinion
Gov. Cuomo, charter cheerleader
Gov. Cuomo is so enthusiastic about charter schools that he wants to greatly expand their number even though he acknowledges that they are not accepting the same number of high-needs students as public schools.
Editorial Cartoons
Hey, Bloomberg
Hey, Bloomberg, can you email me your education policies? They told me I gotta give a State of the State.
Teaching Resources
Research shows
Academic ability of new teachers rises in NY
The academic capability of new teachers in New York City has risen over the past 15 years, new research shows.
Teacher to Teacher
Teaching multiple-choice test strategies
By guiding my students, I helped them overcome their insecurities with answering multiple-choice questions. Even my lowest-achieving students gained confidence as they actually asked for more multiple-choice questions to practice these strategies on.
Building Your Career
Building Your Career
Visual praise with incentives
I created this visual praise with incentives graph for my pre-K class.
New Teacher Profiles
Speech teacher a ‘lifelong learner’
Abigail Wray, a speech teacher at PS 230 in Kensington, Brooklyn, relishes the unique challenge of working with 30 students across grades 2–5.
Retired Teachers News
Reporting TRS distributions on your federal income taxes
If you received one or more of the distributions listed below during 2014, you are required to report the total gross amount of the distribution in box 16a and the taxable amount of the distribution in box 16b on your 2014 federal income tax form 1040.
New year consequences
February is one of those months. The afterglow of the holidays is gone. Those of us shivering in the north and even the unhuddled southern snowbirds have time to reflect on the wintry depths of experience or memory.