When I was young, we played a game called “Button, button, who’s got the button?” We’d circle around a person in the middle, who held a button. That person would “pretend” to drop a button into our open palms, with only one person actually receiving the button. Everyone would immediately close their hands after their […]

Even though Hudson Falls history teacher Matt Rozell has had experience with national media coverage (ABC, CBS, Buzz Feed) of his successful classroom efforts to connect Holocaust survivors with the soldiers who freed them, he was unprepared for the blowout response to a blog he wrote about Governor Cuomo’s disdain for public education and teachers. […]

The Ichabod Crane Teachers Association organized a protest of overtesting at this week’s school board meeting, drawing about 150 teachers and parents fed up with testing. The Ichabod Crane School District is about 26 miles southeast of Albany. “This (the English Language Arts assessment) is not developmentally appropriate for my students and I find it […]

(NYSUT Vice President Paul Pecorale recently returned from Atlanta, where he participated in the AFL-CIO’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference. This is his first-person account of that conference.) I was awestruck this past week at the AFL-CIO Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference in Atlanta, GA., where I […]

NYSUT is saddened to announce the passing of Syracuse Teachers Association member Jessica A. Pereira Jan. 12. She was 28. Jessica moved from Chile to the United States when she was a child. She grew up in Central New York and taught English as a second language at Dr. Weeks Elementary School in Syracuse. Jessica […]

Hundreds of students and their families from across New York state will be commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Day this weekend by attending a showing of the award-winning film “Selma,” courtesy of NYSUT Vice President Catalina Fortino and the other NYSUT officers. Fortino and NYSUT Director of Community Relations Paul Webster have spent much of […]

NYSUT is saddened to announce the passing of David G. Bournazian Jan. 8. David was a beloved, retired music director at Mohonasen Central School District. He is survived by his two sons, George, of Cary, N.C., and Jacob, of Washington, D.C., and four grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife Dorothy and daughter Nadine. Contributions […]

With just days before the start of the 2015 legislative session, NYSUT has launched an ad campaign (PDF) calling on the governor and state lawmakers to pass a budget that fairly funds all school districts in New York. The ad appeared in the Jan. 4 issue of the Albany Times Union, and the Jan. 6 […]