Two MEA members will accompany their students to Washington, D.C., this weekend for a gun violence summit featuring 100 young people from across the country, including survivors of school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Newtown, Connecticut.
By Julie Brill MEA Board member MEA & NEA PAC Fundraising Captain Kentwood Education Association secretary I am a second grade teacher in Kentwood Public Schools, but I think of myself as a frog kisser. For some reason I tend to connect with the “quirky” kids and bring them out of their shell. I value…
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Last spring’s surge of educator walkouts from West Virginia to Oklahoma, North Carolina, Kentucky, Colorado, and Arizona revealed the force behind a different political wave crashing on shores across the country this fall: educators running for elected office. In April and May thousands of teachers and school employees descended…
A few years ago, Jarod McGuffey sat in the staff lounge at his school in Fraser discussing Michigan’s broken school funding system, over-testing, declining enrollment at teacher prep programs in state universities, and other growing concerns. Then he took it to the next step. The 21st-Century literacy teacher at Disney Elementary School decided to get…
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor High school educator Jill Laurin-Maxwell had a special guest tagging along when she went shopping for school supplies this year. The sign language teacher took gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer with her to buy tissues, paper, pencils, Sharpies, paper clips, binders and lotion—an $84 excursion that Laurin-Maxwell said was the…
Launch Michigan is a new partnership bringing together diverse interests from across Michigan’s political, economic, education, philanthropic and government sectors. MEA President Paula Herbart will be a proud voice of labor on the panel, which is setting out to improve the state’s education system. Read more at LaunchMichigan.org. Here read excerpts from a conversation about…
Bailey Rothe graduated from Northern Michigan University in 2017 with certification to teach English and social studies. Now she has a job—and a union family. Rothe accepted a position with Lansing Public Schools in March and joined MEA for the member benefits, job protections and sense of community it provides, she says. “Lansing is such…
Cassandra Joss, a third-grade teacher in Utica Community Schools, recently made a video to show how much teachers spend on their classrooms, and she appeared on Michigan Radio’s Stateside program to talk about it. How did you get the idea for a video of your classroom with and without teacher-provided materials? My district did some…
