About 500 new UFT members had the chance to see “How to Dance in Ohio” at Teachers Night on Broadway on Feb. 1. “It was complete joy,” said UFT Vice President Karen Alford, who leads the union’s new member initiative. “The show spoke to all of us as...

UFT President Michael Mulgrew submitted testimony before the New York City Council Committee on Finance regarding the city's executive budget for fiscal year 2027.

Officially known as the second differential (C6 + PD), most members achieve the salary differential with the highest pay scale by taking 30 course credits beyond their bachelor’s and master’s degrees. But a lesser-known path to the top differential...

By accumulating college credits, paraprofessionals can significantly increase their pay. Whether your career path as a paraprofessional leads you to earn a bachelor’s degree or to earn a master’s degree and become a certified teacher, several UFT...

Since February 2022, the New York State Education Department has changed the requirements for a number of different state certifications. Read the following Q&A for the details.

The Progressive Redesign Opportunity Schools for Excellence (PROSE) program, which affords schools the freedom to experiment and innovate, is marking its 10th anniversary this school year. Nearly 300 teachers, chapter leaders and principals from the...

UFT President Michael Mulgrew says reducing class size and paperwork are the keys to moving the public schools forward.

Forty art educators representing all five boroughs had their work on display in January at El Barrio's Artspace PS 109 in East Harlem at the first New York City Art Teachers Association exhibit since the pandemic began.

A total of 67 UFT members have their work on display at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition, titled “The Art of the Educator,” is the result of a partnership between the museum and the New York City Art Teachers Association/UFT.

Sound homework policy should meaningfully support learning with overwhelming students or teachers. Veteran educators share their strategies for creating homework that’s worthwhile and effective in the age of artificial intelligence



The Bronx plan in the proposed DOE-UFT contract to help schools that face the most challenges will be open to up to 120 schools, not just in the Bronx. These schools will receive additional funds and strategic support to better address the needs of...

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.


Retired teacher Felicia Pecoraro of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has turned personal heartache into a mission to give back and bring a bit of happiness to others as a volunteer at the gift shop at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.


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.

Three teachers in Queens — the New York City borough with the most overcrowded classrooms — drive home the benefits of the state's class size law, which mandates smaller numbers of students per class, by sharing their experiences from the front lines...

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...