MEA member Jaycob Yang will forever be part of a unique group—educators who began their first year of teaching in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. By December, he was burning out in his position teaching Utica sixth graders who chose to attend virtual school. “Especially in the first half of the year, it was […]
Mat Brown, an MEA member who teaches engineering technology in Birmingham Public Schools, recently joined a panel discussion on issues surrounding Native Peoples in Michigan. A member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Brown was one of four panelists in the talk, moderated and livestreamed by former Michigan Teacher of the Year […]
When he was a high school sophomore, MEA member Gary Mishica already had a collection of old cars and buggies to work on, so his parents shouldn’t have been surprised to find another vehicle when they returned to their Copper Country home from a (rare) vacation. They “flipped out” to see an orange 1942 Ford […]
Shana Barnum is known as a principal with “one foot in the classroom” since she taught K-6 for 20 years before becoming an administrator in Mason in 2017. From that vantage point, Barnum is worried by what she sees. She knows her staff is overtaxed and overstressed—just like educators across the state. Two early career […]
MEA member Danya Stump knew from a young age that she wanted to be a teacher, but she didn’t figure out until college that she wanted to be a preschool special education teacher. The impetus for her direction was a little boy she was assigned to work with at the early child development center where […]
Among the first educators in Michigan to receive a COVID-19 vaccination on Jan. 11, MEA member Mark Carlson thought back on the past and society’s liberation from smallpox and polio, terrors vanquished by vaccines long ago in the U.S. The Armada math teacher also dared to look forward for hope. The mix of feelings was […]
For Claudia Rodgers, a second-year social worker with the West Bloomfield School District, the pandemic’s constraints can be summed up by the old expression, “out with the old, in with the new.” “Most of us are social people,” the MEA member said of herself and social worker colleagues. “We enjoy social interaction with others, whether […]
For the past several months, members of MEA and MEA’s higher education branch – MAHE – have begun every meeting by reading a land acknowledgment, which is a formal statement “collectively acknowledging that we meet on the traditional lands served by the 12 tribes of Michigan, upon which those participating in this meeting reside and […]
By Robyne Muray While some educators have transitioned to virtual teaching this year without missing a beat, remote learning has challenged many professionals to find ways to build student participation while continuing to provide necessary guided instruction, classroom management, differentiated support, and social-emotional learning. In my travels throughout the Lansing School District, I have witnessed […]
It’s been nearly one year since a novel coronavirus first began reshaping daily life across the globe and MEA mobilized its bargaining, advocacy, legal and communications resources in response. We sat down with MEA President Paula Herbart to look back at where we’ve been. Here’s an excerpt from our talk. Last month, with school employees […]
