Daniel Clason drew inspiration from a Mississippi blues museum for the centerpiece of his project-based approach in Clarkston: traveling trunks filled with American Revolution artifacts created by eighth graders as hands-on learning tools for fifth graders.

Clason is the recipient of the 2026 MEA Educational Excellence Award for his instructional leadership and creativity as an eighth and ninth-grade history teacher at Clarkston Junior High. Accepting the honor at the MEA Winter Conference, he thanked his students.

“They give me that bigger purpose to know that I’m a part of something that’s bigger than me,” he said.

A Michigan native who taught in Mississippi and Texas before coming to Clarkston in 2022, Clason has embraced his school’s focus on Project Based Learning, helping to run projects that include Constitution Fashion Shows and Civil War Town Hall debates.

Clason leads Reading Apprenticeship learning among colleagues and takes students on an annual trip to Washington, D.C. to see history come alive, said nominator Beth Rogers, a fifth-grade teacher in the district and president of the local union.

“He leads his department, gives everything he has for his students, and works hard for our local,” Rogers said, adding Clason is a building rep, MEA-PAC chair and member of the bargaining team. “We are beyond blessed to have Dan here in Clarkston.”

The biggest project Clason leads is Traveling Trunks, in which eighth graders curate and replicate artifacts, games, and hands-on activities to teach about the American Revolution, which fifth-grade teachers can sign out to enhance younger students’ learning.

Rogers said she loves finding hands-on ways to bring the revolution to life for fifth graders, so the trunks have been a hit. The older students include a QR code on top explaining how to use the contents, and fifth-grade teachers and students offer feedback after use.

“The traveling trunks program has been utilized by our seven elementary schools, which impacts over 500 students each year,” Rogers said in her nomination.

“This program will continue to evolve and change, so this is an impact that will continue each year… with the overall impact being thousands of students, some of whom will eventually work on the trunks as junior high students.”

Clason said the traveling trunks idea came from the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Miss., which uses such a program to bring learning outside museum walls. In his acceptance speech, he credited several educators who helped develop and support the project.

“When we combine together and when we work together, we win,” he said.

Stating public education is “the only club I ever wanted to be a member of,” Clason listed the many teachers, mentors and support staff who have shaped his life and career from youth through today.

“If I’ve shown any excellence at all, it’s only because I am a sum of greater parts. My very existence as a teacher, as a human being, is because of all the great influences I’ve had in my life.”

In his leadership roles, Clason has fought to keep co-taught classes, which face budget cuts in many districts. Co-teaching with a special education teacher gives all students whatever support they need to access complex material and ideas.

Joining MEA after working in non-unionized schools in the south reinvigorated his career because public education is a collective endeavor — and his greatest passion, Clason said.

“I would urge anyone who is seeking excellence to remember that the only real excellence there is to pursue in this field is for students, for our future, for our democracy, for all of those things.”

Read More: Four MEA award winners named for 2026

• David McMahon Human Rights Award — Kathleen Kosobud
• Maurine Wyatt Feminist and Gender Equity Award — Wendy Winston
• Educational Excellence Award — Daniel Clason
• Gerry Crane Human and Civil Rights Award — Frank Burger