A longtime advocate for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ staff and students, Frank Burger became the first recipient of MEA’s new Gerry Crane Human and Civil Rights Award, named after a west Michigan teacher whose tragic story inspired others to action. A 28-year educator in the Flint-area Carman-Ainsworth Community Schools, Burger advises the high […]

As a union leader in Grand Rapids, when she discovered male and female teachers with identical resumes being paid differently, Wendy Winston worked to resolve the disparity. She cites the example for why the intersectional fight for gender equity and human rights must go on. In accepting MEA’s 2026 Maurine Wyatt Feminist and Gender Equity […]

Initially Kathy Kosobud set out toward a career in theater design, but she shifted to education after college and applied her manual arts skills to pre-vocational settings for children with disabilities, spending many years as a special education teacher in Ann Arbor. Following a long career advocating for fairness and creating access to opportunities for […]