Please be patient with us over the next few days. Most of NYSUT’s website is locked down as we prepare for a brand-spanking-new design, to be unveiled Wednesday. Wednesday is May 1, which holds great meaning for gardeners and unionists. We’ve been working toward this for a long time. It started more than a year [...]

Congratulations to the 40 students, and especially the seven New Yorkers, who have been named finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search. Here’s a link to all 40 students and their schools. We’ve teased out those from New York. If the district is obvious from the name of the school, we left that out. Any [...]

People are busier than ever. Loa Noyd, a music teacher and member of the Hancock Teachers Association, and I have spent weeks trying to find 30 uninterrupted minutes for an interview about her students performing at Carnegie Hall.  Thank goodness for a school holiday, so now the plan is to talk Monday morning. Dozens of [...]

Congrats to the Yorktown Congress of Teachers, led by Sean Kennedy. The local has a great website that you can check out. They do a lot for the community, recently raising $2,612 for their local food bank. (Update, make that a whopping $6,000 because after the members raised nearly $3,000 by donating tips they earned [...]

Hi folks! Our host for this blog has upgraded some systems. We were unable to access the site Thursday or Friday morning and it appears that two of the recent posts have disappeared, as well as all comments to blog posts since Aug. 10. We are working with them to fix this. The purpose of [...]

Sabrina Stevens Shupe is a self-described teacher-turned-activist who has become one of the nation’s most articulate and thoughtful young voices in the conversation about so-called education reform. Shupe is a former elementary teacher in the Denver area and a member of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, an NEA affiliate. She was one of the organizers [...]

Our national union leaders are not giving up the fight to restore jobs, and neither is Phil Cleary. Phil teaches preschool students with disabilities in the North Syracuse school system. He’s on his way to Washington D.C. to be part of an effort of labor and community activists trying to get information out about the [...]

NYSUT’s second tweetup had locals sharing how they plan to engage members at the start of the school year. Of course, you don’t have to wait until the start of the school year. Several locals organize events well before school starts. They offer new-member breakfasts or luncheons, and other events such as voter registration drives [...]

Heads up that starting at 7 p.m. this Sunday, a group of NYSUT activists will be tweeting about how to engage members at the start of the school year. We’ll be using the hashtag #nysutchat to help keep it organized. And yes, even if you don’t work in a school, we’d still love to hear [...]

This guy makes it fun to think inside the box. A free web site, MakeBeliefsComix.com, has been helping students learn to write in fun and creative ways by creating comic strips online. Now, founder Bill Zimmerman, a former Newsday journalist, announces he’s launched a special needs section to help students with disabilities communicate better. The [...]