Staff Spotlight: Ellen Stewart

Ellen Stewart, director of equity services for St. Cloud Area School District, has a story she likes to tell about being a child in North Minneapolis. For as far back as she can remember, she taught school in her backyard for the neighborhood kids. Every day, she’d line up lawn chairs and teach all day long during her summers.

“Even the kids who were older than me would come,” laughs Stewart. “I don’t even know what I was teaching, but it was full with homework and snacks. It was the whole shebang!”

Stewart loved it. To her, it was less about being in front of people and more about learning something and sharing it with the world. She still feels the same way today.

Stewart also loved being a student. She was considered a good student and was involved in everything. By her junior year in high school, she was considered one of the student athletes who would “make it.” As college approached, her dream of teaching started to be overshadowed by counselors and teachers who suggested she become a lawyer or some other “glorified” occupation.

“I was going to do international marketing,” says Stewart. “I went to Hamline University to do business marketing. I did all the liberal arts classes first. I wasn’t really into the marketing classes. Then I took a philosophy class.”

Her philosophy class was a turning point.

“Right before the final of this philosophy class,” recalls Stewart, “I remember waiting to the last minute to write the paper [for the exam]. It was full of errors. I knew that. The professor gave it back to me and said, ‘You have great ideas, but there are some errors. I’d recommend that you go to the Writing Center because some of the mistakes you have are cultural.'”

Stunned, Stewart pondered the comment and began to wonder, “Is she saying that because I’m black … I don’t know how to write a paper?”

The idea that the professor didn’t think she was competent because of her skin color upset Stewart. She wanted to share with that professor that the mistakes were because she’d procrastinated. She chewed on the thought for a couple of days before approaching her advisor.

Still emotional decades later, she remembers telling him, “I’m going to be an English teacher. I don’t ever want somebody to make me feel the way she made me feel about that paper. I don’t want to feel like that, so if I master the English language, and I master everything that needs to happen with writing, no one can ever put me down in the future.”

She changed her major to English education that very day.

Stewart was a rising star on the basketball court as well as in the classroom. She transferred to the University of Minnesota from Hamline to play Division I basketball her junior year in college, where she also completed her bachelor’s degree.

After graduation, Stewart began teaching English.

“I just absolutely loved it,” smiles Stewart. “I got such joy out of it. I found that same love I had for getting information and then the exchange of information – that ‘ah-ha’ from the students [that I did from childhood]. Just that environment of learning, I was so excited about it.”

The opportunity to become an athletic director fell in her lap. She wanted to combine both her love of teaching with her love of sports. She became the first black woman athletic director in the state of Minnesota at Henry High School as well as later in Richmond, Virginia’s public school district.

Being the youngest, only black woman and Midwesterner as an athletic director in Richmond helped mold her to who she is today.

“The experience continued to shape my love of education,” says Stewart. “Being able to see people in a different environment and their challenges … just at another entry point. Rather than the classroom, we’re looking at students through activities and sports.”

Stewart began to climb the professional ladder. She became an assistant principal, then joined St. Cloud Area School District 742 as principal at North Junior High School, McKinley- ALC and now, as the director of equity services.

“In the 28 years I’ve been in education, this is the first time I’ve not been in a school building,” says Stewart. “When I stopped coaching girls basketball, it took me a year before I could watch it again. I still had that butterflies [feeling], and I knew that I’d miss it. So, I knew I would have great angst going into the schools, but fortunately for me, I’m going through this weird scenario with the pandemic. But I’ve found my niche. I really enjoy what I’m doing right now.”

In this role, Stewart’s lens looks slightly different than that of her predecessors. Her goal for the department is having touch points for students in the classroom. In her view, the best way to reach kids is in the classroom.

Stewart has spent a great deal of time with the learning and teaching department this year to find and create ways to bring equity into spaces like curriculum development, textbooks and testing.

“It’s not that we’ve abandoned the bigger issues of implicit bias and training. That’s still there,” explains Stewart. “I’m looking at shifting a majority of our work … to how do those big areas fall into curriculum and instruction? Meaning- how does a teacher talk to a student? I’m working on my doctorate right now and one of the things I’m working on is called discretionary spaces. It’s that interaction a teacher has with a student. How do we make that space intentional by removing bias and racism? It’s how does that student have an authentic learning experience?”

The challenges, according to Stewart, are that everyone is in a different spot in their learning journey whether it is academic or equity learning. Within that journey, the other challenge is finding a balance of who not to leave behind, who to challenge and who not to fatigue. Stewart likes to call it the sweet spot. Learning happens when students’ needs are met.

“It all comes back to teaching,” says Stewart. “I’m not an expert. I may have experiences. I’m learning in my own journey. I make mistakes, but the beauty … is that I find myself to be 100% vulnerable to the experiences.”

Having the experiences of being a student, teacher, administrator, basketball player, and oh-and-did-she-forget-to-mention beauty pageant winner, as well as growing up in poverty, have given Stewart a mindset of understanding and compassion.

“I can empathize in a way that perhaps everyone who hasn’t been afforded that same opportunity,” says Stewart. “I’m extremely blessed that I’ve had a wide range of experiences in education and the like. I’ve been in schools where four, five, six of my students have been murdered, to a school in Virginia where kids were getting brand … new Mercedes. Having that whole range from rural to big city, from charter schools to public schools. It’s as though I feel like I can participate in a variety of conversations about change and solutions. I can have a seat at the table.”

Now with a seat at the table, she feels she can set up a few more chairs for her students, just like she did years ago in her backyard.

 

Stewart’s other amazing stories:

1. Stewart played professional basketball for the Women’s Basketball Association (WBA) team, Minnesota Stars. Within the year, WBA was purchased by the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). The Minnesota Lynx team was created the second year of the WNBA. After turning down a spot to try out for the Lynx, Stewart became a part of their scouting team. She had two children, was married, loved teaching and being an athletic director, so she agreed to recruit others instead.
2. To get out of cleaning her house one Saturday morning with her sisters and mother, Stewart attended orientation for the Miss Black Minnesota Pageant. In 1988, Stewart became Miss Black Minnesota. She competed for the Miss Black USA Pageant in Birmingham, Alabama where she finished in the top ten.