Meet Kim Ellison, newest Minneapolis school board member

Kim Ellison, a swimmer, teacher and North Minneapolis resident officially took over Lydia Lee’s spot on the Minneapolis school board January 10. She landed the position by appointment, so her term will only officially last until November’s school board elections, though she plans to run for a full term.

Ellison was raised in Maryland and spent her junior high and high school years in Detroit. She is the mother of two South High students and two high school graduates and is legally separated from U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison.

For more than a decade, she taught math and social studies at alternative schools City Inc. and Guadalupe Alternative Programs, as well as coaching the North/Henry High School swim team and teaching swimming lessons at the YMCA. Ellison is the Minneapolis NAACP Education Committee chair, a board member for Parents United for Public Schools, and she is on the North High School Advisory Committee. Since 2008, she’s worked as an executive assistant for Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington counties, but she said she missed education and hopes her new position can be a culmination of a career in education.

Is there one teacher that sticks in your memory as someone who has impacted your life?

Yes. Mr. Churchill – fifth grade teacher. I was living in Columbia, Maryland at the time. The school was called Longfellow Elementary School. It was an open school, so I had him parts of my third, fourth and fifth grade years. He was a social studies teacher, but just so engaging. I’m a math/science kind of person – that’s what I’m into – but he was very engaging, and I still remember Mr. Churchill.

What perspective do you feel you bring to the school board that isn’t already well represented?

I’m a teacher. I’ve been in the classroom, so I hope I bring that perspective of guiding students on a day-to-day basis.

Is there one issue that you hope you can address during your tenure as school board member? I know your term could be up in November.

The classroom is huge for me, so things that are going on there. The achievement gap, of course, but I think everybody is worried about that. I’ve been on this little literacy kick lately, so I hope I can help guide the school district so we have kids reading well by third grade. The classroom – I hope to make it a comfortable place for both the teacher and the student so that learning can take place.

You taught for years at an alternative learning center.

Yes, nine years at Guadalupe Alternative Programs on the West Side of St. Paul. I taught for a couple years at the City Inc. on the North Side of Minneapolis before that.

[At] City Inc. I was the math teacher, but when I went to Guadalupe, the principal, she brought me in and said ‘I think it’s about relationships with the students, and you can’t do that one hour out of the day. Students have to take multiple classes, so you’ll be teaching [a variety of classes].’ I couldn’t be the math teacher anymore.

We worked in teams. Each team was made up of two teachers – a social studies teacher and a language arts teacher – and a counselor. So once a week we got together and pretty much did case management – go student by student. So in the room, with the three of us, we’d name the first student. How’s that going? We’ve got two teachers who have seen the student during class and then a counselor who, if the student hasn’t been coming to class, the teachers can say, ‘Well I haven’t seen him. Have you checked with the family? What’s going on there?’

They didn’t come to us with this clean plate just ready to learn. They were parents. They might’ve been court-referred – any number of issues. They might’ve been homeless, so we needed to deal with those issues as well as the teaching.

What did you find most challenging about working with students that had struggled in the past?

I had one student who came in. I was teaching math, and math is one of those things for most people. It’s another language for some people, and she was so frustrated that she wasn’t getting this one problem. She couldn’t concentrate; she was almost in tears. And then she said, ‘You just don’t understand.’ She hadn’t eaten. She’d eaten lunch the day before and then hadn’t eaten again until she got there, and then had a bowl of cereal. There were a lot of people in her house, living there. So she was sleeping on the couch, but someone had friends over, so she couldn’t sleep.

I just took her to the side, and said, ‘You know, it’s amazing that you’re here.’ Just make the student feel comfortable. That this is a lot – the fact that you got here. So let’s just calm down, and take a couple deep breaths, and let’s not worry that we’re not getting algebra on the first try.

That was the hardest part, was knowing what else is going on outside of their school day.

What strategies or teaching styles did you find most effective with students who had a lot going on outside of school?

A lot of times the students would ask, ‘Well look, when am I ever going to use this?’ Especially teaching math, ‘When will I ever have to use this?’ So area and perimeter – that was my favorite lesson. I probably spent way too much time on it, but I asked them to design their dream room. What’s your dream room? How long is it? How wide is it? How tall are the ceilings? How many windows do you have?

Then one day I took them to Menards and said, okay, now price it. How big is your room? How much paint do you need? How much carpet do you need? How do you figure that out? What’s the size of the window?

So for them it was like, okay I can see this. It’s not just an equation on a piece of paper.

When you were working with these kids, did you see ways that the school district could have helped them do better?

Because I was in an alternative school, it was a little bit different. With interns, we had as many counselors as there were teachers. It was a team. But then you can expand it. This was a school with 150 students, and I guess that’s what’s most exciting about working on the school board. How can we expand that? How can we affect, instead of 150 students, 1500 students? Or 15,000 students?

Do you see ways that that can be expanded?

We’re going to need a lot of support. Our public schools don’t have as many counselors as we had. The ratio of counselors to students is a little different than I had at alternative school, but we have partners within the city. Maybe it’s the park board, or maybe it’s libraries or after-school programs. We need to find those partners that we can incorporate into our children’s lives.

Years ago you were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it sounds like you have a pretty active professional and now political life. How has your illness impacted that busy life?

The way the disease has affected my body is mostly muscle fatigue. Like I said, I was a lifeguard and swimming and very active physically, so that’s been limited. Sometimes I walk with a cane, because balance might be off, but you know, just try to keep doing what I’m doing. I might walk slower. I might not walk as long, before I sit and rest, but still doing.

Alleen Brown

Alleen Brown (alleenbrown@tcdailyplanet.net or Twitter @AlleenBrown) is a freelance writer from Minneapolis.