In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 4 election, the Retired Teachers Chapter held a dozen afternoon phone banks at UFT headquarters in Manhattan, where RTC members urged fellow retirees to vote for Zohran Mamdani and the union’s other endorsed...

Thousands of New York City public school educators will ramp up a statewide campaign on Tuesday, 1/6, to demand state pension reforms for educators hired after April 2012.

School districts that rely on international exchange programs to hire teachers to address shortages in some subject areas largely opt for J–1 cultural exchange visas. Such districts are feeling the impact of the Trump administration's pause on such...

Approximately 17,000 teachers and other educators responded in the first 24 hours to the UFT survey by saying they were interested in getting the vaccine as soon as possible.

The Broadway League on Feb. 2 kicked off the 2023 season of its Broadway Bridges program to offer $10 Broadway tickets to thousands of high school sophomores and their teachers. To mark the occasion, the league invited 500 educators to Teachers’...

As a result of our intense negotiations with the DOE over our concerns with the NYC Solves curriculum, the DOE is releasing key policy updates to all middle and high school math teachers and principals. These updates are a step in the right direction...

Nine educators at MS 137 in Ozone Park, Queens, graduated from the same school where they were middle schoolers. The teachers and paraprofessionals credit their own teachers' mentorship and cultural connectedness as the inspiration for their deciding...

UFT President Michael Mulgrew didn’t mince words about the current threats to public schools and public school communities at the union's 2025 Spring Education Conference. He asked the more than 1,600 members who packed the New York Hilton Midtown to...

This summer, the AFT and the UFT announced a $23 million partnership with Microsoft, Open AI and Anthropic to forge a first-of-its-kind teacher institute for artificial intelligence: the National Academy for AI Instruction. 


The UFT is launching a September radio ad campaign welcoming students and staff back to school and pledging to keep fighting for the funding New York City schools need.

High-stakes teacher evaluations, which leaned heavily on student test scores, had no discernible impact on improving student achievement or student test scores, according to a report by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University...

Educators could earn CTLE credit by attending any of five professional development workshops offered by the UFT Teacher Center at this year's Spring Education Conference. 
This year’s New York City theme allowed Teacher Center instructors to infuse...

Increasing member autonomy was a priority in the negotiations leading up to the 2023 DOE-UFT contract. That’s why in all single-session schools as well as District 75 schools that choose to use the default workday in the contract, teachers and...

Three streets on Staten Island have been renamed to remember educators who died during the Covid pandemic. Two of those streets are near IS 24 in Great Kills and honor Sharon Nearby and Melissa Kruppa, early victims of the virus. The third street, in...

A new middle school teacher in the Bronx learns that her fellow teachers are willing to guide and support her when she broke down in tears in the staff lounge after an overwhelming day.


Natalie Kavral is a 2011 graduate of the plumbing program at Queens Technical High School. Now, more than a decade later, Kavral, one of only two female plumbing teachers in New York City public schools, teaches plumbing and runs the plumbing program...

Lisa Friscia, the 2022 Elementary TESOL Teacher of the Year, has helped build a strong and vibrant ENL instructional practice at PS 39 on Staten Island that engages and empowers English language learners.

Hundreds of UFT members took advantage of a free UFT Teacher Center course on the science of reading in July. The course, which combined in-person and virtual learning, was part of the union’s effort to support educators as the Department of...

So far, the logistical and safety challenges of re-opening schools have been met. But despite enormous efforts by teachers, remote learning — something more than 540,000 kids now rely on all the time, and the rest rely on all or part of the time — is...

It is possible to finance classroom projects with grants, donations and other money-saving strategies. Here are some avenues.

Marna Davidson, the former coordinator of the Florida Retired Teachers Chapter office, has died at 89.

Alaa Yousef was elected chapter leader at Park Slope Collegiate in Brooklyn this October, and in her first action in that role, she used the operational issues complaint process to get her members paid for instructional lunch periods. When those...

As a middle school math teacher, I’ve learned that providing students with spiral reviews — having students revisit concepts throughout the year — created by their peers instills a sense of ownership of the work. It typically makes the problems more...

In 1996, New York Teacher reporter Jack Schierenbeck, a gifted writer and labor scholar, undertook to write a series of articles detailing the history of the UFT. The result, “Class Struggles: The UFT Story,” was a vivid and insightful retelling of...

Growing up near Coney Island, Brooklyn, Ariella Moshchinsky knew early on that she would pursue a career in the sciences — and she says it was her public school education in Brooklyn schools that helped inspire her to achieve that goal.


The UFT calls on the DOE to recruit, hire and retain special education teachers, counselors, nurses, OT/PT, speech, social workers, paraprofessionals, hearing services and all titles that deal with special education to create a supportive learning...

Word of mouth is the reason many retirees find their way into the Manhattan Section's Si Beagle classes, which are offered online and in person, and again include “dine-arounds,” walking tours and museum trips.

IS 383 Chapter Leader Syreeta Dixon refused to back down when her principal violated the DOE-UFT contract in multiple ways in her Bushwick school’s teacher schedule and then threatened to lay off staff when Dixon called her on it.


As part of their fight for a fair contract, educators across the city on March 30 set out to make their heavy workload visible to their school communities and to the city during a citywide grade-in.

UFT Vice President for Elementary Schools Karen Alford writes that we are excited to return to our classrooms to do what we do best after recharging over the summer. And we won’t let budget cuts or layoffs stop us from providing our public school...

Each year since 1984, several of the city’s Career and Technical Education graduates have been nominated for the Success Via Apprenticeship program, which combines college courses with apprenticeships in classrooms and in each student’s chosen...

Librarians are valuable colleagues in schools, but often their role is misunderstood. Here is a FAQ to answer many of the questions you may have.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew submitted testimony before the New York City Council Committee on Education's hearing on the New York City preliminary budget for fiscal year 2027.

UFT members came together in every borough on the union’s Day of Action on May 6 to demand improvements to Tier 6 of the state pension system.
In Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, members took part in simultaneous after-school rallies, while members on...

Fostering a respectful environment and establishing predictable classroom routines goes a long way toward helping students thrive. But for new and experienced teachers alike, this school year presents fresh challenges to traditional classroom conduct...

In my work as a 10th-grade social studies teacher, I’ve found that fostering student agency — allowing students some choices and control over how their day goes — increases engagement. 
Here are some ways that a classroom teacher can encourage...