By Chris Curtis Chris Curtis is an award‑winning professor of psychology and former president of the faculty association at Delta College in the Great Lakes Bay Region. Like most professors, I’ve accumulated small gifts from students over my career: a Sigmund Freud pencil sketch, copies of Psychology for Dummies and The Journal of Irreproducible Results, [...]
The Aspiring Educators of Michigan (AEM) wrapped up their latest reading/writing competition with an awards ceremony for students who were asked to analyze which voices were missing from their school’s book collections. The “Growing Libraries with Representation” project, funded by a CREATE grant from NEA, asked secondary students in Mason to survey their classroom and […]
Over a long career—first in the U.S. Army and now as a teacher in the career and technical education (CTE) field—MEA member Mike Cook has always used education and training to reinvent himself and build a resume of marketable skills. This year Cook began creating a new CTE program in Redford Union Schools, a western [...]
The MEA awards for Human Rights & Excellence are awarded at the MEA Winter Conference, MEA Summer Conference, and MEA Representative Assembly. Nominations are accepted October 1 – December 31 of the previous year. Nominating individuals or groups must be MEA members in good standing. If the nominee to be considered is an MEA member, the […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Kelley Cusmano is the 2024-25 Michigan Teacher of the Year. In February, the Michigan Department of Education announced the 10 Regional Teachers of the Year who are finalists for the 2025-26 MTOY to be announced in May. Important work has been done in Michigan to attract new teachers into […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor If you follow the news, you might recall a huge budget crisis that burst on the scene in the Wayne-Westland School District as winter holidays approached 18 months ago, suddenly prompting threats to privatize busing and lay off dozens of employees. You may remember the local union mobilizing resistance […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Teacher Candice Ridley first noticed the organizing talents of paraeducator Fred McFadden several years ago while taking part in collective action during a staff convocation to start a new school year in the Pontiac School District where both work. In the audience, Ridley and other staff members all remained […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Nearly 30 years from the start of his labor activism as a graduate student organizer, MEA member Alec Thomson returned to his union origins on the campus of Wayne State University on Tuesday to protest the Trump administration’s draconian cuts to higher education and medical research. Now a union […]
UPDATE 4/2: In response to the Senate’s legal action, the Court of Claims judge said that she would not issue a ruling but instead urged the Supreme Court to accept the bypass application to issue a final ruling in the matter. The Supreme Court denied the bypass application but has ordered the Court of Appeals […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor MEA members were joined by parents, students and other community allies in conducting Walk-Ins to Protect Public Schools across the state on Wednesday as part of a nationwide collective action organized by NEA and AFT to spotlight a powerful—and empowering—sense of unity. The morning events held outside school buildings […]
