That success depends on your community is something I only truly understood after my first year of teaching. When I was a para, I was committed to supporting my students and my teachers. When I first became a teacher, I forgot that I needed to ask...

If you are a paraprofessional, the DOE-UFT contract establishes rights and obligations in terms of when you can be absent from work. Learn about how you accumulate and can use sick days and about excused absences.

The UFT has initiated an outreach program to determine how the union can best support retired paraprofessionals. The Retired Teachers Chapter includes approximately 7,600 paraprofessionals.

Priscilla Castro was elected on May 25 as chapter chair of the Paraprofessionals Chapter for the term ending June 30, 2024. Castro had been serving as interim chapter chair since Shelvy Young-Abrams retired in October 2022.

A lunchtime LEGO club conceived by two paraprofessionals grows into an award-winning career and technical education STEM program at Fairmont Neighborhood Elementary School in the Bronx.

A student-friendly book and seminar on food allergies was created by Fatima Straughn, a paraprofessional at MS 45 in the Bronx, as a way to teach young children about the effects of food allergies.

At their 41st annual Paraprofessionals Festival & Awards Luncheon on March 25, members celebrated the many rights they have gained since their chapter's founding and the trailblazers who led the way while acknowledging there is much more to do.

View the winners of the Outstanding Paraprofessional Awards at the 2023 Parafest.

As a paraprofessional in the Vision Education Services Chapter, which serves about 900 blind and visually impaired students citywide, Lucio Medina acts as a guide and advocate for the students he supports.

Colleagues and students create a mosaic mural to remember Rulx Dagus, a paraprofessional at P 369K in Park Slope, Brooklyn, who died of COVID-19.