University Of Missouri-St. Louis: Education Alumna Elizabeth Bleier Invests In The Region's Future As Executive Director

Press release from the University of Missouri-St. Louis:

November 22, 2021

After graduating from Grinnell College with a bachelor’s degree in political science, Elizabeth Bleier planned to go to law school.

Those plans took an unexpected turn when Bleier joined Teach For America – something she intended to be a short break before returning to school full-time. In 2006, the organization placed her in St. Louis sight unseen.

“I got the education bug, decided not to go to law school and have been here ever since.” Bleier said. “I feel like St. Louis just has so much going for it, and it’s such a great city to live in day-to-day.”

Bleier never thought she would stay put anywhere for 15 years, much less a city she had never been to before. However, in the intervening years, St. Louis became home and altered the course of her professional career.

Teach For America’s partnership with the University of Missouri–St. Louis College of Education allowed Bleier to earn her teaching certificate and further her education with an MA in special education while teaching at Gateway STEM High School.

Ten years later, she returned to Teach For America St. Louis, and last month, the organization named her executive director.

Bleier has also earned an MA in educational leadership and an MBA from Saint Louis University and participated in Leadership St. Louis, FOCUS St. Louis’ prestigious leadership development fellowship.

Going into Teach For America, Bleier had no idea where she would be placed or what she would be teaching. After being assigned to St. Louis, she found out she would be placed as a special education teacher, which turned out to be a perfect fit.

Bleier’s mother worked as a child psychologist, with the bulk of her career spent in education as a school psychologist. As a result, she was already familiar with some of the issues facing special education students.

“I was very much surrounded by conversations around students with special needs, the unique challenges of students in special education,” she said. “When that became my placement, I was pretty excited about it. It’s a unique and special opportunity to both teach and then also to be able to be advocate for and manage the caseload of students with special needs.

“I think that was a really helpful developmental opportunity to be able to not just focus on the teaching side but also the operational, the compliance and the additional student support side.”

Bleier was also excited about her post at Gateway STEM, known as Gateway Institute of Technology at the time, a St. Louis Public Schools magnet high school with a strong focus on mathematics and science curriculum and career preparation in highly technical fields. The diverse student body and staff appealed to her, as well as the career educators who served as mentors.

The school showed Bleier the ideal characteristics of an urban magnet school, while also opening her eyes to academic and operational challenges. She noted that working with veteran teachers helped her get up to speed in the classroom and instilled her with a sense of humility.

“I was really developing a stronger listening ear to see what’s working, what veteran teachers have been doing,” she recalled. “How can I replicate that and emulate that and put it into my own style, my own words, so it’s authentic to me?”

The master’s program at UMSL provided Bleier with vital pedagogical knowledge, particularly regarding special education. The environment also fostered relationships with other educators that would prove to be crucial in Bleier’s future positions at KIPP St. Louis and Teach For America St. Louis.

“It brings together so many educators from so many districts around St. Louis,” she said. “I think a huge part of the value I got from the program was being able to tap into networks and work with and learn from teachers in Hazelwood, Ferguson, Florissant and Parkway. Having this network of folks doing work across the ecosystem of education was incredibly valuable.”

Toward the end of her time at Gateway STEM, Bleier thought she would make the jump from teacher to administrator and entered a dual degree program at SLU for aspiring principals. In addition to studying educational leadership, members of the cohort also worked toward business degrees.

Bleier realized that she was interested in solving the challenges she saw at Gateway STEM from an operational, business standpoint. Instead of pursuing a school administrator position, she went to work for KIPP St. Louis as director of talent acquisition.

KIPP – the Knowledge Is Power Program – is a national nonprofit network of college-preparatory and public charter schools. The St. Louis chapter started with one school when Bleier joined in 2012 and has gradually grown to six schools. As the director of talent acquisition, she “stretched her operations and management muscles” by working to attract and retain talented educators and also got a behind-the-scenes look at a swiftly growing organization.

This press release was produced by the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The views expressed here are the author’s own.