The UFT High School Division and the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council hosted the fourth annual Future in Focus career fair at UFT headquarters in Manhattan on Oct. 31 to help students at New York City’s public high schools learn the benefits of unionized careers.

UFT members across the city participated in a “A Day of Peace and Justice” on June 9, 2020, to pay respect to George Floyd on the day of his funeral and to show solidarity with the movement to confront racism in the United States.

With social distancing guidelines and aggressive health and safety measures in effect, New York City public schools welcomed back thousands of students during a phased reopening.

Sensing in the civil rights movement a natural ally with shared goals and values, the early leaders of the UFT and its predecessor, the Teachers Guild, threw their support behind the movement and its objectives of racial equality and individual dignity, and forged a strong alliance with black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. UFT President Al Shanker encouraged New York City schoolteachers to attend the 1964 March for Jobs and Freedom co-organized by Rustin, and the union subsidized travel to the march for participating UFT members.

All photos courtesy: UFT Photo Collection, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University

Chapter leaders from across the city gathered at UFT headquarters on Sept. 20 to learn more about their responsibilities and the issues facing New York City public schools as the new school year begins.

A downpour couldn't stop UFT members from dancing at the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn on Monday, Sept. 2, 2019.

It was the first day of school for 1.1 million children and their educators and families across New York City on Sept. 5, 2019.

Kids are kids, whether the calendar says 1890, 1910 or 2019.

So when 4th-graders from Brooklyn’s PS 10 took the “Sweatshop Workers” tour at the Tenement Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, it’s no wonder they were fascinated to learn about the immigrant children who had lived there.

More than a thousand UFT members and their families marched up Fifth Avenue in the annual Labor Day Parade, and then gathered for food and games at a barbecue at the Robert F. Wagner Middle School on the Upper East Side.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined Mayor Bill de Blasio, Chancellor Richard Carranza and a classroom full of students for an algebra lesson at Bronx Leadership Academy II on Sept. 5, the first day of the new school year.