Members who work in Queens celebrated the work they do and learned new strategies to bring to the classroom at the fourth annual UFT Middle Schools Conference at UFT headquarters on Feb. 4.

Alison Nunziata (left) of IS 201 and Elaine Chambers of IS 187, both in Brooklyn, participate in a workshop about how boys learn.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew praises “the passion and motivation” that members bring to their work.

UFT Vice President for Middle Schools Richard Mantell, pictured here joining members of IS 364 in Brooklyn at the conference, spoke about the importance of teaching grit and persistence to middle school students.

Raphael G. Tomkin, a teacher at PS 333 in Manhattan, explains his group’s project in the Gamification workshop that offered ideas on how to use coding and programming to teach math.

Victoria Fuller (left) and John Ross from IS 192 in Queens and Carol Johnson from the Theater Arts Production School in the Bronx collaborate in the Preparing Young Scientists workshop.

Patricia Pabon and Mauricio King of P12 in the Bronx discover how using maps to solve a murder mystery can help students learn geographic reasoning in the Mapping It Out workshop.

Elaine Headley (seated) of PS 213 in Brooklyn and Maria Katsanos of IS 238 in Queens collaborate in the popular mapping workshop, that turned a lesson in geography into a game of Clue.

Pauline Siringo of IS 78 in Brooklyn created a headline for an article as part of the workshop on enhancing English as a new language instruction in the integrated classroom.