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 veteran educator exchanged warm greetings, smiles and waves with passers-by as he made his way toward a local eatery for lunch. Like many teachers Hamilton is well-known in his community, but he is especially prominent and beloved for a student-led program he manages known as Shoe Club.

“You can’t go anywhere without someone wanting to give him a hug,” said Nathan Fleshman, president of the East Jordan Education Association, who joined him for lunch that day.

Local business owner Ted Sherman, the school board’s president, agrees that Hamilton’s influence can literally be seen: “It is most meaningful to me to witness former students—many years removed from being a student of his—seek him out to say hello, catch up and genuinely be happy to see him.

“I have no doubt that many former East Jordan students would mention Matt Hamilton if asked, ‘Who has made the biggest impact on your life?’”

Hamilton’s lunch route through downtown passed another visual reminder of his influential work: 100-year-old GAR Park, named for a Civil War veterans group, Grand Army of the Republic.

Students in the Shoe Club raised the enormous sum of $130,000 to enhance the 0.2-acre mini park with a pavilion, landscaping, fencing, a military relic, signage and sidewalks.

Dedicated in a ceremony just a few months earlier, the park improvements were part of the club’s Honor and Service Project in which middle schoolers also interviewed area veterans to produce videos, publish a book, and plan a school-wide Veteran’s Day assembly as tribute.

“The park upgrades were an aspect of the project, but we knew we wanted to get the veterans involved,” Hamilton said. “The Shoe Club is not a fundraising club. It’s about leadership, and life skills, and inspiring others.”

Nearly five dozen local veterans answered a written survey for the Honor and Service Project, and 30 of them joined students for in-person interviews. For the book, Stories of Service, club members wrote each veteran’s story along with essays about what they learned from the experience.

At the student-planned school assembly, two veterans and several students spoke. A student sang the national anthem, and the school’s band played, joined by a military color guard. The assembly was “super powerful and emotional,” Hamilton said.

“Teachers were crying; kids were crying—and again, it was all student-led, student-organized.”

Honor and Service was not the first ambitious project completed by the Shoe Club, but it prompted Fleshman—the local union leader and a science teacher at East Jordan High School—to nominate Hamilton for the statewide MEA Educational Excellence Award, he said.

“Seeing rooms of middle school students having frank, vulnerable and mature conversations with veterans—with little to no adult intervention—has been truly awe-inspiring,” Fleshman wrote in the nomination. “Feeling the passion in how students talk about these projects has brought tears to my eyes.”

In Shoe Club, middle school members and high school mentors are encouraged to value themselves and others; find inspiration to dream big; and learn empathy, life skills and leadership as they plan and carry out community service initiatives.

The club’s centerpiece is the Shoe Museum: a collection of more than 200 shoes gathered from both East Jordan schoolkids and notable people who have made a positive impact on the world, including athletes, scientists, entertainers, inventors, artists, explorers and leaders.

Earlier in that August day, the club had accepted a new pair of shoes for the collection. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had stopped by Hamilton’s classroom to donate snakeskin-patterned heels, share a framed proclamation recognizing the club, and talk with club members in the midst of summer break.

Whitmer told reporters covering the visit, “When you see what [Hamilton] is doing here, and you hear the stories and the conversations around values and leadership, I think it’s really a cool way to draw in young people. It’s really an inspiration.”

Whitmer’s schedule didn’t allow her to stay for lunch and a stroll through downtown, but hosting the governor at East Jordan Middle School was “an absolute honor,” Hamilton said afterward.

“She’s a very busy person, traveling all over the state; it meant a lot to me that she came and supported my students and celebrated the work they’ve done in the community.”

Hamilton became a local celebrity long ago, but last spring the spotlight widened to draw attention from Whitmer and beyond when he won the statewide 2024 MEA Educational Excellence award from Fleshman’s nomination. From there, MEA put Hamilton forward for national recognition.

Now he’s added a brilliant new chapter to his inspiring story: Hamilton received the 2025 NEA Member Benefits Award for Teaching Excellence, becoming the first educator from Michigan to win one of the profession’s highest honors.

He was selected from among five finalists for the prestigious recognition, which was bestowed on Feb. 13 at the NEA Foundation Salute to Excellence in Education Gala in Washington D.C. The award comes with a $25,000 prize.

A five-minute documentary about Hamilton’s teaching practice was shown at the ceremony before the award winnner was announced.

“I’m deeply humbled and extremely honored to receive this award,” Hamilton said in his acceptance speech. “I’m incredibly grateful to be in this room and in the presence of so many extraordinary educators from across our great country, each with our own impact, our own stories, and our own missions.

“This room is filled with some of the best human beings on this planet.”

Hamilton started the Shoe Club in 2008—five years into his teaching career—after a motivational speaker at a school assembly used shoes as a device to tell stories of young people who appeared well on the outside but struggled with unknown challenges.

When his own students then began opening up to Hamilton about their problems, he was inspired to launch a club where they could learn their value, build self confidence, and develop into leaders.

He would require students who wanted to join to read a couple of books on those subjects, write a paper, and submit 10 life goals. Initially he hoped three to five kids would sign up, but 27 joined right away and he knew he was on to something.

Students can donate a shoe to the museum after completing the steps for becoming members.

“The lessons I’ve learned through the Shoe Club are lessons for all of us as educators,” he said in his acceptance speech. “Every student in our classroom matters. Every student has a story and every student needs to know they are valuable.

“When we teach from that place of love and purpose, we don’t just change lives, we impact communities and futures.”

Shoes collected by the club—from icons such as Michael Jordan, Dolly Parton, Jane Goodall, Bruce Springsteen, Ruby Bridges and her teacher, Barbara Henry—are more than artifacts, Hamilton told the crowd.

“They’re stories of perseverance, grit and generosity, and they remind us that success is a journey of effort, growth and purpose.”

Over the years, Shoe Club members have completed numerous challenging projects. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they raised $75,000 to complete a solar array at the middle-high school and later pulled together $70,000 to improve a school garden with fencing, a hoop house and shed.

In his speech, Hamilton credited an “incredible support system” that allows him to accomplish all he does, which includes his family, students, colleagues, community and union. Of his students, he said, “They have no idea how much they inspire me every single day.”

He also called out educators he had growing up in his nearby hometown of Cadillac for shaping him into the person he is today.

Hamilton concluded his speech with hopeful advice: “To all my fellow educators: Dream big alongside your students. Don’t be afraid to take risks, and let’s continue to make a difference one student, one story, and one shoe at a time. I’m honored to be here, proud to work in the best profession in the world.”

(Watch Hamilton’s full acceptance speech.)

His colleagues back home were thrilled by Hamilton’s win. Many watched the Friday night awards ceremony on live stream, and he returned to school the next week to find a “red carpet” laid from the school’s entrance to his classroom decorated with balloons and streamers.

Beyond the Shoe Club, Hamilton teaches video production and seventh-grade history where he brings lessons to life with outside speakers, Virtual Reality goggles, and “fake field trips” — dramatic stories he tells with the lights off in which he populates the world of the past with his students.

Every year by Thanksgiving he gives every student a nickname. One boy is “Sock” because he’s a thinker who does well in class discussions held in the Socratic method. A boy who likes fishing is named “Jitterbug” after a lure. A Taylor Swift fan whose name starts with K becomes “K-Swizzle.”

He’s been told that fifth and sixth graders look forward to getting their nicknames in seventh grade: “It becomes a big deal, but it’s really just building relationships and letting kids know they matter and they’re unique and special,” he said after winning the MEA award last year.

Hamilton believes his willingness to jump in and try new things has been key to his success, so one of his big goals is to teach students not to view failure in a negative light—to show failure is natural and can teach us how to achieve our dreams.

In keeping with that philosophy, the Shoe Club this year started a new podcast—If Shoes Could Talk: Icons of Success on Failure—and landed some big names for interviews, including autism activist and author Temple Grandin, auto-racing champ Mario Andretti, and Civil Rights leader Bernard Lafayette.

It’s been a year of exciting news for Hamilton and his students.

But going back to that beautiful August day last summer, as he sat at his classroom desk following the hubbub of a visit from the governor, the 23-year educator found himself in a contemplative mood. In the quiet he revealed what really matters and keeps him going.

On the wall behind his desk hangs one shoe, paired with a framed photo and the goals of a former student, Danielle. “If there was a fire in the school and I could only grab one shoe, it would be this shoe,” Hamilton said, his voice soon becoming heavy with emotion.

Danielle joined the Shoe Club as an eighth grader in 2008, immediately setting to work on the requirement to write down her 10 life goals. Tragically, she lost her life later that night in a four-wheeler accident.

“Danielle’s shoe is the best gift that has ever been given to me, symbolizing how precious time is. We don’t have much time — that’s why we work hard. We don’t know how much time we have on this Earth.” (Watch the video.)

Perhaps someday Hamilton will be asked to add his shoes to the collection—and what a story they will tell.