I enjoyed Sarah Kuhner’s Teacher to Teacher column headlined “Make connections with hexagonal thinking” [Nov. 2].

As a teacher at a hospital clinic, Katie Garfield instructs K–12 students while they receive treatment for cancer and blood diseases including sickle-cell anemia.

As we enter the holiday season, remember to make yourself a priority as well. The end of the year is a good time to reflect on decisions made during the past year: what worked and what didn’t, and how to build better habits. 


UFT Vice President for Elementary Schools Karen Alford writes that our schools are more than academic institutions. They are caring institutions and, as educators, we understand that caring for the communities we work in is part of teaching and...

Sometimes, informal assessments can be more meaningful and less anxiety-provoking than traditional tests for students. Three informal assessments I use in my high school chemistry classes are 10-Point Bingo, a whiteboard activity and “I Can”...

New pension plan tiers come into existence when the state Legislature enacts new laws that change benefits, contribution rates and service requirements. But a pension tier is never set in amber. Over the past 40 years, legislative amendments to each...

When Roy Fialkow retired in 2019 after a 29-year career as an adaptive physical education teacher, his life came full circle: He returned to Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, where he had been a dancer in his 20s, as the nonprofit’s education...

While the national union may seem distant from our activist local in New York City, we are, in fact, an integral part of the AFT. The AFT’s bird’s eye view keeps us involved in national issues and policies that affect the wider labor movement and...

Mayor Eric Adams has introduced a new policy to limit families with children to a 60-day stay in shelters. Sign this petition calling on the mayor to reverse this policy before it creates chaos in our schools and harms families who are the most in...

School safety is a prerequisite for teaching and learning. The UFT’s Safety and Health Department is dedicated to protecting all UFT members from safety threats that can confront them in schools. Here are answers to some of the most common questions...

When PS 30, a United Community School in Harlem, found out in early October that it was going to lose $285,000 due to low enrollment, it decided to take the initiative and find 30 more students. By the end of October, PS 30 had 76 new students — more...

Miriam Krinick, who turned 100 in November, was honored on Nov. 1 at Brooklyn’s PS 108, where she taught for 18 years, at the unveiling of a Little Yellow Library, a charitable donation to the school from the Kendra Scott Foundation.

For too long, we have been at the whim of whatever agenda the current mayor decides to pursue. The school budget cuts we are now fighting is a perfect example. What our schools need is not always aligned with what the mayor wants. What is the purpose...

Federation of Nurses/UFT members employed by NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn won a significant victory in their long-running battle with the Sunset Park hospital over short staffing when an independent arbitrator on Dec. 1 sided with the union and...

Actor Heather Simms is playing Missy Judson in the current Broadway revival of Purlie Victorious. She made her stage debut in 2nd grade at PS 243 in Crown Heights, hamming it up as the mother in “Hansel and Gretel.”

After striking for more than three weeks in November, the Portland, Oregon school district and the union representing teachers, school counselors and other employees reached an agreement that boosts salaries and planning time. But the new contract...

The United Auto Workers is targeting nearly 150,000 workers at U.S. factories owned by 13 automakers, including large foreign-owned companies and electric vehicle manufacturers, in one of its largest organizing drives in history.

A federal rule that takes effect on Dec. 26 creates new standards for determining when two companies should be considered “joint employers” under the National Labor Relations Act, which could make it easier for millions of franchise employees and...

In a terrible blow to New York City public schools still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Eric Adams plans to make three successive 5% cuts to education funding between December and June.

Understanding and interpreting data is a fundamental skill of modern life. Learn how to teach data skills using engaging, student-centered strategies and resources.

Skills such as communication, collaboration, problem-solving and emotional intelligence are crucial and in-demand and helping students acquire them is much needed, but where should teachers begin?

The DOE-UFT contract gives educators an expedited process for addressing many workplace problems: the operational issues resolution process. In the 2023 contract, the paperwork and operational issues process was expanded to address even more...

Did you know there’s a place to turn for support — both at and away from your work site — when tragedy strikes? It’s the Victim Support Program, co-sponsored by the UFT’s Safety and Health Department and the city Department of Education. 


There is a room at IS 391 in the Bronx with color-changing lights, soft bean-bag chairs, a gurgling fountain, books and fidget toys.
“We needed a calming place where students could come for counseling, and students and staff could just sit and self...

Some 30 educators, academics, activists and representatives from community-based organizations gathered together on Nov. 29 for a Summit to Support Newcomers to discuss how to best assist educators confronted with the thousands of asylum-seeking...

The UFT is launching a Fix Tier Six campaign in an effort to improve the pension benefits of its more than 50,000 members who have joined the New York City pension system since April 2012.

As we enter the coldest months of the year, many asylum-seeking families who endured great hardship to reach New York City are facing additional trauma as Mayor Eric Adams’ administration prepares to evict them from emergency shelters.

It is simply not acceptable that one person has blanket authority over the country’s largest school system.

The UFT and other education advocates are applying pressure on the Adams administration to have a viable plan for implementing the state’s class-size reduction law. The mayor’s midyear budget cuts and his comments about how he doesn’t believe the...

The UFT’s COPE — Committee on Public Education — program is one of the benchmarks of Sonja Hill’s chapter leadership.
Hill, a 5th-grade teacher in her 31st year at PS 41 in Brownsville, Brooklyn — and the school’s chapter leader for more than half of...

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

Louis Pichardo brings his twin passions for teaching and electrical work to his job teaching electrical installation to career and technical education students at Queens Technical HS in Sunnyside. Pichardo, a third-year teacher, asks his students to...

ENL/ELA teacher Eva Dejesus divides her library, which has books in both English and Spanish, by genre. "Students start in their native language, because we know that development of the first language supports development of the second," she says.

School communities have pulled together to care for and educate tens of thousands of newcomer students, many of whom have arrived in New York City with little more than the clothes on their backs. The UFT hosted a listening session on Oct. 25 to...

Ninety-nine-year-old Thomas Naegele retired from teaching industrial art at the HS of Art & Design in Manhattan 32 years ago, but his legacy lives on in two generations of art teachers that he inspired in his wake.

Members of the UFT Veterans Committee appreciated the opportunity to reconnnect at a meet and greet at union headquarters on Nov. 8 — the committee’s first in-person event since before the COVID-19 pandemic.