Cateisha Wardlaw is a paraeducator in Pontiac, working with high school students who have autism. She has worked in the district for 15 years; her dream is to be a preschool teacher. She has an associate’s degree in early childhood education, but she recently learned it would cost $50,000 to finish a bachelor’s degree and […]
Phu Trieu has taught middle school social studies in Mattawan for 16 years. He loves the profession while acknowledging it has ups and downs. He came to the United States as a baby after his mom fled Vietnam with him and his siblings and they lived for a time in a refugee camp in Thailand. […]
Miah Cooper is a second-year teacher in Essexville, which is a part of the Bay City community where she grew up. The Bay City Central High School graduate was honored by the NAACP during Black History Month in February for service to the community as one of the only black teachers born, raised, and teaching […]
DaVasha Lobbins works as a secretary at Waverly Schools in Lansing, but she aspires to be a teacher. The 27-year-old was empowered by a high school class that taught personal finance and other life skills, so she earned a bachelor’s degree at Western Michigan University with a double major in Family and Consumer Sciences and […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Growing up in a small farming community in west Michigan, MEA member Angela Pérez didn’t know what she would do with her life—but she wanted to do something. She was the first in her family to go to college when she started taking classes at Muskegon Community College. Pérez […]
MEA member Jeff Kass was a mid-career English teacher when his take-home pay began going down each year. Amid rising costs of living, the Ann Arbor educator—like others—took on second and third jobs, including one year moonlighting as a pizza delivery driver. With a former student serving as his manager, Kass worked a few shifts […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Ask MEA Economist Ruth Beier about her youth, and you might get a wry joke with a deadpan delivery: “I describe my childhood as Lord of the Flies in the suburbs. It was a pack of kids and some Cap’n Crunch.” Truth is—she’s not kidding. On the precipice of […]
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer got a close-up look at the work of a literacy specialist when she job shadowed MEA member Kristyn Cubitt at Troy’s Wass Elementary School in March. Whitmer observed Cubitt co-teaching a readers’ workshop lesson followed by a coaching session with a third-grade teacher. She also saw Cubitt run a Leveled Literacy Intervention […]
Reaching and teaching amid coronavirus school closures By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor MEA member Sarah VanderMeer says her heart aches with missing her developmental kindergarteners from Brown Elementary School in Byron Center, so she checks in via FaceTime to see how they’re doing, setting up appointments through parents. Recently she spent half an hour […]
Education has become a front-burner issue in a bid for re-election by U.S. Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan because of the stark contrast between him and his opponent, he says. Peters has fought back against the destructive budget cuts and policies of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. His Republican challenger, John James, is being aided […]
