gpmartinson

Education Minnesota-Roseville members Dan Beck, Miriam Castro-Franco, Maria Le Seller, Lauren Miller, Silvia Vasquez, Todd Richter and Greg Martinson attended the 2025 Education Minnesota Representative Conversion on April 25 and 26 in Bloomington, MN. This annual convention is where Education Minnesota elects new leaders sets the priorities of the union for the next year and address statewide and national issues.

2025 made the stakes for this event very high. We discussed pensions, health care and the difficult national work of addressing the actions of the Trump administration. We elected a new President for Education Minnesota, Monica Byron. We elected a new Vice-President Marty Fridgen and a new Secretary-Treasurer Ryan Fiereck. There was powerful debate about our priorities and we had some amazing speeches from the Chair of the West Virginia merged Teachers Union as well as the Presidents of the NEA and the AFT.

Jodi Kyllonen and the 2023-24 cohort of Teacher Leaders wrapped up the 2023-24 Teacher Leader Program on Saturday with a Showcase presentations. We had 5 school board members in attendance as well as Dr. Loeck, Dr. Wilson and Jake Von De Linde.

Teachers did amazing work which will inform the district and Education Minnesota.

Here are the presentations:
Bob Anderson, RAHS Math Teacher “Teacher Compensation: A Longitudinal Study” Presentation | Slides

Mark Jaspers, RAHS Special Ed Teacher “Are We A-B-Seen? Supporting our LGBTQ+ Population” Presentation | Slides

Lucy Mehlan, RAMS Life Science/Computer Science Teacher “Service Learning” Presentation | Slides

Ben Samuelson, FAHS Career/Social Studies Teacher “A Conundrum: Students Come to School but Don’t Stay in Class” Presentation | Slides

Steph Scierka, Central Park Kindergarten Teacher “Consistent Classroom Support to Benefit Students and Educators” Presentation | Slides

Sarah Webb, RAHS Spanish Teacher “Equity & Quality in Two-Way, Dual Language Immersion” Presentation | Slides