After two years of city and school leaders fumbling with the learning crises caused by the pandemic, “it is now time to listen to the people who do the work with the children each and every day,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew declared in his keynote address at the union’s Spring Education Conference at the New York Hilton Midtown on May 21.

Mulgrew told the more than 1,000 UFT members in an audience that included Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams that the city Department of Education can address what he called the “massive crisis” of a nationwide teacher shortage by lowering class sizes and reducing educator paperwork.

“We’ve got to lower the damn class size,” he said, sparking cheers from the audience. “It is really not that complicated.”

Mulgrew said teachers face more and more demands to fill out forms and increase assessments of students. “What are we not doing? Working with the kids,” he said. “Is our school system about bureaucratic accountability, or is it about meeting students’ needs?”

He called Hochul “a governor who actually gets what we do” and praised her for the huge increase in education aid in the current state budget.

The governor said she instructed fiscal advisers that when it came to school spending, “I want to break records here; I want to show priorities.”

Schools Chancellor David C. Banks told the crowd that after “two of the longest years” in the school system’s history, “the only reason we are still standing is because of you and teachers all across the city.”

Adams said the UFT persuaded him to develop and help fund UFT Teacher Centers and invest more in classroom technology. But he was silent on class size, insisting the greatest need was safe schools for children “so you can give them the quality education they deserve.”

The conference began with a Speak Up! panel of eight educators at the morning town hall. Then, before reconvening in the ballroom for the gala luncheon, participants divided their time between an exhibit hall featuring the work of career and technical education students and two workshops: one on building resilience and tolerance among students and another on strategies for teaching multilingual learners.

Counselor and motivational speaker Steven Pinto, citing the rise in suicides among young people, particularly adolescent girls, told the participants in his workshop, “Depression is through the roof; anxiety is through the roof.”

Pinto said it is vital to teach students to have realistic expectations and learn to work through discomfort.

Deborah Harris, a paraprofessional at the North Bronx School of Empowerment, said Pinto’s humorous style helped his advice register.

Harris said she preached to students the value of education in making their lives easier once they become adults.

Novlet Golding, a special education teacher at PS 57 on Staten Island, said Pinto’s suggestion to sometimes touch students to calm them offered her a new strategy for one pupil. She previously focused on talking to this student or giving him a timeout. But, she said, “I think he would be receptive” to offering physical reassurance.

The Strategies for Collaboratively Teaching Multilingual Learners workshop was led by Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove, two of the co-authors of an acclaimed book on the subject, “From Equity Insights to Action.”

Honigsfeld told a large audience that addressing the emotional well-being of students was more important than perfectly polished lessons. She advised them to focus on building a strong sense of classroom and community in classrooms with many multilingual learners.

Shan White and Courtney Crenshaw, who co-teach 2nd-graders at New Bridges Elementary School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said they were impressed not only by the advice but the fact, White said, that Honigsfeld and Dove had been “New York City teachers just like us.”