Meet the New Principal: Eagle Point Elementary's Shawn Bromeland

opens this year with a new principal—Shawn Bromeland. Oakdale Patch editor Patty Busse talked with Bromeland about his background and his plans for the upcoming school year.

Oakdale Patch: Tell me about your background.

Shawn Bromeland: The last five years I was assistant principal over at Maplewood Middle School. Prior to that I started in teaching. I was an English teacher for eight years in St. Paul. I taught a couple other years in different places—one in Morris, where I went to college, and one in Minneapolis with their Urban League.

Oakdale Patch: What made you switch from the Urban League to a suburban district?

Bromeland: I always knew in the back of my mind that I was going to go back to St. Paul, because I grew up in St. Paul. And so the Urban League was a great experience, I really enjoyed it. I was the teacher of the year there for them. But I still knew I wanted to go back and teach kind of where I’d grown up. So I got the opportunity to teach at Highland Park Junior High, and I taught there for eight years.

Oakdale Patch: What made you decide to move from the middle school level to the elementary school level?

Bromeland: I had the opportunity to sub for Oakdale Elementary for a month and that experience was really great. One of the things that struck me was that, “Boy, we have a big job on our hands to try to make sure that we get our students as prepared as we can for the middle school.” They really are these students who love education and love learning and love being in school. How do we work with that? How do we develop those students so that when they get to middle school that transition’s easier? And so, I became really interested in the elementary at that point.

Oakdale Patch: Is there anything that you plan to change at Eagle Point?

Bromeland: Eagle point is doing a nice job. Their achievement is pretty good. The teachers are fantastic. I think that in education in general, though, we need to be thinking about how we continue growing as a school. One of the things that I would like to see is that our enrollment increase a little bit. We’re kind of a small school. The other thing I would like to have our school focus on is how we’re educating students in terms of, are we making our students  21st century learners and ready for their career that they’re going to have down the road? I’m a big believer that technology in the classroom is important.

Oakdale Patch:  What kind of technology?

Bromeland: It feels like education is always a little bit behind in technology and with technology you always end up having to spend a lot of money, so it’s about making do with the thing that we have, but then bringing in the things that we can. This year we had a mobile lab come into the school. All of our classrooms, for the first time, all have SMART boards. But those are just tools, it’s about how we’re integrating the technology into our lessons, so with our students, it’s not about giving them more tools necessarily, but it’s about how they’re using the technology in the classroom. So, SMART boards are fantastic, but are we using the SMART board in a new way? Are we beginning to bring in outside resources? Are we using the Internet to the full capacity that’s out there? Those are the things that I think that schools can do right away without having to spend a ton of extra money.

Oakdale Patch:  What are you most excited about in the upcoming school year?

Bromeland: I’m excited to meet the families. I’m excited to meet the kids. I’m excited to be in the classroom with the kids. I want our school to be all about relationships. I want our school to be about building relationships with our families and with our students so that kids feel like this is a place they want to be. That learning isn’t a job, but learning is something that’s an expectation for them and something that they cherish and they value. I want our school to be such that every day students are leaving this place feeling that they can take something away and they value this place. That’s the feeling I want.