We Know What Kids Need — It’s Time We Exercise our Power

By Leah Lin, Candidate for UFT Vice President of Elementary Education

If you’re an elementary teacher in New York City, you don’t need a reminder of how hard things have gotten — you’re living it.

Your one daily prep? More often than not, it’s gone. Lost, not to lesson planning, not to looking at student work, to meeting with your para or co-teacher, or to figuring out how to best meet the needs of your class. No — it’s eaten up by mandatory data spreadsheet meetings, unsolicited sessions with outside vendors telling you how to teach, coaches pushing one-size-fits-none scripts, and paperwork that helps nobody learn. It’s theft — from your students, of your time, your professionalism, and your purpose.

This isn’t support. It’s sabotage.

You’re the expert in your classroom. You know what your students need. But you’ve been micromanaged, second-guessed, and sidelined — not just by the DOE, but sometimes even by a union leadership that seems more interested in managing optics or placating the DOE, than standing up for you.

And let’s name something else: the disrespect is gendered. Elementary teachers are a workforce made up overwhelmingly of women — brilliant, skilled educators — yet we’re treated like robots with binders. Show up, smile, follow the script. Don’t question the process, don’t expect support, and for heaven’s sake, don’t ask for time to plan your actual lessons. If lawyers or engineers were treated like this, it’d be a scandal. But when it’s elementary teachers, we’re told to “be flexible.” Enough.

We deserve a union that doesn’t just talk the talk, but acts like our time and expertise matter. That means enforcing our contractual rights — starting with our self directed prep — and transforming PD into something that actually fuels our practice. That means organizing across the city, not just responding to crisis school by school, but building real, proactive power.

Because we don’t just need a union leadership that acknowledges our challenges. We need a union that can deliver improvements. No more whack-a-mole problem solving, where one school wins back a prep period only for ten others to lose theirs. No more waiting for someone else to raise hell while the rest suffer in silence. We need systemic change. Contract language with teeth. Citywide enforcement. Union leadership that doesn’t ask educators to work harder to make up for leadership’s inaction.

The current leadership has had 60 years to get this right. That’s long enough.

It’s time for a union that says:
🛑 Stop stealing our prep.
🛑 Stop wasting our PD with top-down nonsense.
🛑 Stop treating experienced educators like they need a script to teach.

And it’s time for a union that actually delivers:
✅ Real autonomy in the classroom — with enforceable protections.
✅ Teacher-led professional learning that reflects our lived reality.
✅ A union that moves as one when even one member is disrespected.

You became a teacher because you believe in children. You stayed a teacher because you believe in your school community — even when the system makes it harder every day.

Now it’s time to believe in each other — and in what’s possible when we organize for something better.

We are not the problem. We are professionals.
We know what kids need.
And we know what we deserve.

In solidarity,
Leah
Candidate for UFT Vice President of Elementary Education

Instagram Handle: @the_leah_lin & @abettercontract
#WeKnowWhatKidsNeed #WeKnowWhatWeDeserve #RobotsWithBinders #NotTodayDOE #TimeToLead