By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Over a 45-year career as a paraeducator in Ann Arbor Public Schools and a union leader in Michigan, MEA member Percy Brown has traveled the country teaching others in his role how to build strength and respect for school support staff and the important work they do. An early […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor When MEA member Corey Rosser first sought a teaching job after college 20 years ago, the landscape was competitive and his only offer came from a school that didn’t fit the dream he’d once imagined. “I was going to teach AP (Advanced Placement) classes and coach varsity basketball and […]
Landen Robinson is a rising sophomore in the College of Education at Wayne State University, but he first fell in love with teaching in high school. Robinson spent two years in a Teacher Cadet program at Lakeview High School in St. Clair Shores, part of the district’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) offerings. “It was […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor In June of 2021, MEA member Justin Harper and two co-founders formally launched a free program for youth in the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor area, focusing on sports as a tool for teaching kids about health and nutrition along with problem-solving and leadership. Back then Harper was working as a 15-year […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor MEA member Sarah Le Febre realized last spring she didn’t know how many years she’d accumulated in her teaching career or what time counted toward retirement from her early experience as a long-term substitute or years of coaching soccer and cheerleading. “I had to call the 1-800 number to […]
Shoe Club Nation, a nonprofit organization founded by Michigan educator Matt Hamilton, is launching a search for “Educator All-Stars” to help expand the program to middleschools across Michigan. Hamilton, who was recently named the National Education Association Foundation’s 2025 Award for Teaching Excellence, created the Shoe Club 17 years ago in East Jordan, Michigan, following […]
The Michigan Education Association today announced the recipients of the 2025 MEA Scholarships, honoring exemplary public school students from across the state who will be attending a Michigan public university next fall. Among the 319 applications submitted for scholarship awards this year, the MEA Scholarship Fund Trustees chose 24 new award recipients who will each […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor MEA member Gabby Marderosian set a goal for 2025 to collect rejection slips as a means of pushing herself to complete personal art projects amid the demands of working as a traveling elementary art teacher in Farmington Public Schools. “It’s a fun way of making yourself put yourself out […]
By Brenda Ortega and Heather Palo MEA Staff It was mid-August, the dog days of last summer, and MEA member Matt Hamilton looked like a mayor on parade walking down Main Street in East Jordan, a small town along the Jordan River in northern Michigan’s Charlevoix County where he teaches middle school social studies. The […]
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, [...]
