Cirien Saadeh joins Minneapolis Schools Voices as a community connecter. Saadeh will be making connections throughout the district with educators and families and doing some reporting along the way.

As a teacher and community organizer, I am so excited to be working alongside the team at Minneapolis Schools Voices. I am someone who really loved school growing up - and who really struggled with school. For most of my life, I attended Catholic schools and right now I teach online for Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona. I also recently began to adjunct at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

I am a community journalist, community organizer, and community educator. I’ve organized around food justice, immigrant justice, land justice (in Arizona), and these days my work focuses on media justice. Specifically, how can we ensure that historically-marginalized communities are able to build power through community journalism and have access to the power of community journalism? For me, this means that aside from my work as a community journalist, I also teach community journalism and I’ll have a textbook self-published in May, where I share a community journalism curriculum for us all to make use of.

Academically, I have a PhD in Sustainability Education from Prescott College and I am currently finishing a second graduate degree, a Masters in Science in Resilient and Sustainable Communities. As much as I have loved the program, I will say that being back in school again has been very tiring and it’s also made me an even more compassionate teacher. I’m so grateful for the amazing teachers I’ve learning from now and, also, I’m looking forward to graduation (hopefully next Dec. 2023). As part of my capstone research, I’m hoping to better understand the possibilities for a community-owned journalism school and worker-owned newsroom - work I want to bring back to my community and work on alongside my community and networks.

You’ll find me most often at places like Sammy’s Avenue Eatery or the Franklin Ave. Seward Coop Creamery. I also love the Seward Cafe and I just discovered Reverie in Powderhorn Park. As part of my work at Minneapolis Schools Voices I will be hosting as many one-to-one relationship-building meetings as I possibly can. I’ll be attending the various Parent Advisory Committees each month and I’ll be tabling, doorknocking, and doing whatever else I can to hear your thoughts on Minneapolis Public Schools and to share our Minneapolis Schools Voices resources with you.

Outside of my community and professional work, I am an avid traveler. In January, I’ll be going to NYC for the sixth time and in May, when I visit Prescott College for work, I’ll also be planning a road trip across Arizona - as well as another trip to NYC to see the new Lin Manuel-Miranda musical “New York, New York” and a stop in California for a cousin’s wedding. In August, for my birthday, I’ll be visiting Maine for the first time and in October, I’ll be taking the Coast Starlight up the West Coast, spending time in the various cities along the way. I’m also an older sister and an older cousin - I have one younger brother and fifty or so younger cousins, all of whom I am very close to.

I’ve also got two dogs that I love more than just about anyone or anything: Hannah Milo and Tucker James, rescue littermates.

I am so excited to once again be reporting on education in Minneapolis, and even more excited that I also get to spend so much of my time doing the relationship-building work that matters so much to me.

Feel free to contact me at cirien@mplsschoolsvoices.news to set up a one-to-one!