While there is still much work to do, educators are blazing a trail in the effort to transform the way New York City students learn to read, employing new phonics-based literacy curricula that will be used in all elementary schools starting in September.

That was the consensus of the morning town hall moderated by UFT President Michael Mulgrew at the Spring Education Conference. A panel of UFT Teacher Center district coaches and field liaisons as well as New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks discussed the progress and pitfalls observed this school year when 15 community school districts piloted one of the three eligible phonics-based curricula.

“This is the biggest initiative in literacy in the country right now taking place inside our schools,” Mulgrew said.

Focusing on the science of reading is a great idea, he said, but the key to its success is “setting up a training regimen where we give people what they actually need.”

That is where the UFT Teacher Center entered the picture, providing professional support for teachers beginning in summer 2023. This school year, the UFT Teacher Center employed one district coach for each of the 15 districts in the pilot.

“The teachers were engaged in the work,” said panelist Evelyn Edwards, a UFT Teacher Center district coach liaison. “They knew we were there to listen to them, to answer their questions, to see what their needs were.”

The panelists concurred that the experience was not as good for teachers trained by outside consultants brought in by the DOE. “Outside vendors ... don’t know our students quite like we do and they don’t know the teachers,” UFT Teacher Center District 21 Coach Heather Daniels said to applause.

Paraprofessionals need more training, and additional support and resources are needed to make the new curricula accessible for District 75 students and English language learners, the panelists said.

“Change is messy,” said UFT Teacher Center District Coach Christine Hanley, who works with Staten Island elementary schools, “but if we’re supported and we can do that at a place where we are failing forward toward progress, it works.”

“There’ve been some challenges, but I do see how it works,” said town hall attendee Danielle Minor, a 5th-grade teacher at PS 175 in the Bronx whose students include a number of English language learners. “I like the curriculum, I like the books that are attached to it. I just hope that we stick to it.”

— Dara N. Sharif