Yadira Hans is a 4th-grade teacher at PS 249 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and one of this year's Big Apple Award winners. PS 131 teacher Anita Betances, who taught Hans third grade, set her on her path.

Nicole Feliciano, a teacher and chapter leader at West Preparatory Academy on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, 
is the recipient of a 2019 Big Apple Award for helping students get much-needed eye exams and prescription eyeglasses.

For Jo Ann Westhall, an elementary school education includes reading, writing, arithmetic — and computer science. Westhall, a computer science teacher and the chapter leader at PS 31 in Bayside, Queens, brought a subject reserved for middle and high...

Zenzile DaBreo, a kindergarten teacher at PS/IS 109 in Brooklyn, was honored with the Sanford Teacher Award as the “most inspirational teacher” in New York State. “We only have two rules in my classroom: be respectful and be responsible,” she says.

Paraprofessional Hollie Tubbs of PS 231 in Brooklyn set out to inspire her students during Black History Month but she ended up inspiring people across the world after a photo went viral on social media.

As paraprofessionals celebrate 50 years in the UFT, members can thank Velma Hill, the chapter’s founder and first chair, for leading the charge to uplift paras and their communities by transforming their job into a secure union career.

“My goal is that students start to see themselves as problem-solvers, and that there’s a process by which we approach problems using the lens of the tools we have in class,” says Academy for Software Engineering in Manhattan teacher Jonathan Rothman...

Susan O’Rourke, a school secretary at PS 23 on Staten Island, encouraged her three older sisters to become paraprofessionals. Anthony Sanchez, his wife, Alejandra, and his mother, Juana, are all paraprofessionals in schools in Queens. Christina...

In William Green’s AP chemistry classroom at Frederick Douglass Academy III in the South Bronx, every student-teacher interaction is deeply informed by Green’s journey from homelessness to becoming a finalist for the 2019 New York State Teacher of...