From the earliest days of the UFT, presidents Charles Cogen and Al Shanker knew that educators could be a powerful tool for reform. Educators knew first-hand the problems that their students faced, and they encouraged educators to come up with...

A faltering national economy. Huge budget gaps in Albany and New York City. Unemployment at a peak. Homelessness on the rise. Wall Street losses. Threats of massive layoffs and service cuts. Transit and tuition increases. Demands for concessions from...

A basic tenet of the UFT has always been that organized labor and progressive elected officials are essential to promoting the interests of its members. Indeed, the backing of the labor movement and political allies was instrumental in the UFT’s...

Despite its name, the United Federation of Teachers is a union of 200,000 working people who are committed to improving the lives of New Yorkers in many different ways. Most, but not all, provide education, child care or health services for adults...

The current school-budget crisis is no surprise to many veteran city public school educators. Fiscal turmoil seems to assault our schools every 15 or 20 years. Typically, teachers are called upon to save the day and, for the sake of the children...

As the UFT’s fourth president, serving from 1998 to 2009, Randi Weingarten led the union through a period of economic instability, two contentious city administrations and mounting attacks on the labor movement and public education. She relished...

Not far from the UFT’s Park Avenue South headquarters, Al Shanker sits stiffly in the study of his apartment. Physically, he’s not himself.

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

The UFT Disaster Relief Fund was established in the wake of 9/11 to help members who lost loved ones in that tragedy. Since then, the fund has helped members who have been personally affected by disasters such as Hurricane Sandy and has contributed...

Donate to the Daniel Dromm Scholarship Fund in memory of Patricia Filomena.

Important information for members from New York Teacher columns: For Your Information, Know Your Rights, Know Your Benefits, Q&A on the Issues, Secure Your Future, Your Well-Being and Grants, Awards & Freebies

As we wrap up another school year and begin also to plan for the upcoming one, school social workers across the nation, and certainly within New York State, cannot avoid addressing the recent developments in the nation’s "war on terrorism." The death...

I am sending this in on behalf of my son, Danny. Danny was 23 years old when he worked on the 55th floor of 2 World Trade Center when the first plane hit. He has suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder since then. He struggled to go right back...

The Greatest City in the World Was Today attacked, bruised, and scorned

As a teacher of English as a second language, I listened as teenagers asked questions about the tragedy as it unfolded before them — and I struggled to provide them with answers. This is my story.

deep inside the darkest moment there is a sudden burst of light movement that illuminates ignorance beyond disbelief at the same time the sky breaks its promise to heaven and falls the black sun tries to re-ignite when out of the blue the weather...

It was a clear morning of possibilities, a primary election day. The day itself was one of those brilliant pre-autumnal gifts that late summer offers in the weeks following Labor Day, meant to make people feel good as they went about their ordinary...

I woke up at 6 a.m. on this late summer morning, listening to Curtis and Kuby, a talk show on 770 AM radio. I forced myself up out of bed to walk the dog. My wife, Susan, was already awake getting her daily consumption of public radio while...

oh, what did you see on the news today, dear little friends of mine? I saw there are people, oh, so mean. Doing things I’d never seen. Ending lives… murdering. A world grey and dark — ’stead of blue and green. That’s what I saw on the news today. Yes...

I was working as a school secretary in PS 104. Our principal, Ms. Marie DiBella, became the captain of the ship. She put all of us in specific locations with specific jobs. I was amazed how everyone in the school came together to help each other. The...

PS 79 is a five-story school one block from the Grand Concourse on East 181st Street. The building towers over the surrounding structures and has a clear view into Manhattan.

On the morning of September 11th, I was teaching my freshman art class at LaGuardia HS of Music & Art and Performing Arts. When I arrived at school, everything seemed normal — a beautiful day and a class of adorable, enthusiastic young people. A...

I am a guidance counselor at a high school in Brooklyn. I had a student whose mother was also at the WTC when it was attacked in 1993. He said that he begged her to quit then, and was both scared and angry on 9/11. The entire day he was with me...

I was rushing that morning to get out of the house, jump in my car to drive to NY Transit Tech High School for a school visit. I would have driven down the West Side Highway to the Battery Tunnel and pass the World Trade Center. When I first heard...

I was the UFT rep at JHS 185Q when I was summoned to the principal's office and informed that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought at first that it was a small, private plane when the principal explained that it was a commercial...

I was part of a group of UFT Teacher Center colleagues who opened and categorized the outpourings of gifts and supporting messages from students from all over the country, who had sent books, original drawings, lovely, sensitive letters, etc. for the...

We collected food, water, gloves, sterile eye drops, bandages etc. for relief sites (around the city). Since my daughter and I worked at the Staten Island Richmond Stadium center every day and night after school, I would bring back lists of items...

We made it a class project to do "something" that would help. I allowed the class to discuss ideas with each other, and find a way that we could raise money for the families of firefighters who had perished in the attack. My class voted for "freedom...

In the days that followed, my leadership students collected $5,000 and donated the money to a city fund.

We watched them rise block upon block of glass and steel into long bands of light

On September 11, 2011 terrorists struck the city's twin towers Who dared to do this, who thought they had the powers? Our incredible skyline of New York city will never be the same The senseless destruction, shows only steel and ashes remain.

We all came together as a family. This is one of the many times I was proud to be a New York City teacher.

I wish that day had never occurred, but the beauty of a nation standing together in the name of peace is how I will remember that dreadful day.

I could not be prouder of the grace, calm, unity, decisiveness, and courage shown by our administrative and mental health staff that day and the days and weeks that followed.