By the time MEA member Nathan Fleshman began teaching in 2013, the “social contract” that he believed in growing up — ensuring educators could rely on stable pay, benefits and retirement — had been broken. Fortunately for Fleshman, a science teacher and union president in East Jordan, some of what was lost has been won […]
Just nine years into a second career as a technology teacher in Pontiac, Candice Ridley is union president and senior staffer in her building. Anti-educator policies drove out veterans. Data shows Michigan also experienced a nation-leading 70% plunge in the number of aspiring educators enrolling in teacher preparation programs during Gov. Rick Snyder’s reign — […]
As a 27-year history teacher, Ryan Furkas knows the importance of documenting the past while those who lived it are still around to tell the story. Now that his daughter is becoming a teacher, Furkas feels urgency to share what life was like before Gov. Rick Snyder and how he destabilized the system. Otherwise, newer […]
MEA member Chuck Alberts remembers Dec. 11, 2012, when the Michigan Legislature rammed through passage of union-busting bills to weaken organized labor’s collective power. Back then Alberts was a new vice president of the Lansing Schools Education Association (LSEA), standing among thousands of protesters who filled the Capitol and the lawn outside as horse-mounted state […]
Thirty years ago, MEA member Carl Lowe was a decorated Division I college athlete with a pre-law degree when he chose to become a history teacher. Lowe drew inspiration from Richard Gordon, a history teacher and track coach at John Glenn High School in Wayne-Westland where he was a star athlete and returned to teach. […]
To educate younger MEA members, veteran Wayne-Westland teacher Tim Sullivan made a video of news clips from 2011 when Gov. Rick Snyder and a Republican-controlled Legislature cut $1 billion out of the state education budget. “They talked about the cuts as ‘shared sacrifice,’ but then they also gave businesses a $1.4 billion tax break,” Sullivan […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor MEA-Retired member Jo Bird started her teaching career in Zeeland in 1974, formally retired in 2006, and subbed for a dozen more years before finally leaving the classroom. But she never stopped being an activist. Over decades, Bird has devoted her time and energy to many causes, through good […]
In true librarian fashion, MEA member Christina Chatel had a nagging question and set about digging for an answer: “Where are the books written with the 13- to 15-year-old in mind?” As a middle school library media specialist in Troy, Chatel reads several dozen books a year and talks with hundreds of young people to […]
MEA member Amanda Walker first got to know newly elected state Sen. Chedrick Greene (D-Saginaw) before he was a candidate for the 35th-District seat in a special election in May. A teacher in Bay City, Walker and Greene — a fire captain in Saginaw — both participated in a one-year, multi-partisan public policy program at […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor When MEA member Amanda Walker took a lead role organizing Saginaw-Midland-Bay City educators to vote in a spring special election for a vacant state senate seat, the goal was to energize everyone — but especially members who had been politically disengaged. Walker and the team exceeded their own expectations. […]
