Tim Beekmann retires after 33 years with Eden Prairie Schools

Tim Beekmann will get out of school for the last time on June 13. Currently serving as principal of Eden Lake Elementary, Beekmann is retiring from his education career after 33 years – all of it in Eden Prairie Schools.

Originally hired as a first-grade teacher for the 1992-93 school year, Beekmann spent 15 years as a classroom teacher for first, second, third and fourth grades at Prairie View Elementary. At that point, Carol Meyer, then the Prairie View principal, encouraged him to apply for the role of educational coordinator, a position similar to an associate principal. 

“I’m like, ‘No, I don’t think I will,’” Beekmann said. “I never saw myself as moving into that leadership position. I really loved what I was doing.” With continued encouragement, however, he applied for and received the position, which he viewed as a chance to try something new. 

Beekmann spent six years as educational coordinator – 21 years in total at Prairie View Elementary – before moving to Eden Lake as an associate principal in 2013.

By the next school year, 2014-15, Beekmann was principal of Eden Lake. The previous principal had taken a job in another community. “I thought, ‘Well, I will apply, and we’ll see what happens,’” Beekmann said. “I’d only been there one year, but those opportunities don’t happen very often – and here we are 11 years later.”

A kid who didn’t like school, Beekmann wanted to emulate the teachers who connected with him

Ironically, Beekmann was not fond of school as a child. 

“I was adopted at eight days old in southwest Minnesota. I was the only biracial child in, well, anywhere it seemed, and I did not have a good experience in school,” he said. He describes himself as a creative, hands-on learner, rather than someone good at taking paper-and-pencil tests.

It wasn’t until junior high and high school that he experienced one or two teachers “that really made me feel seen and heard,” Beekmann said. 

Those teachers influenced Beekmann’s eventual decision to major in elementary education at Concordia College in Moorhead. He wanted, he said, “to hopefully be that teacher that a few of them were for me, that changed my experience.”

During his time at Eden Lake, Beekmann experienced the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trying to keep kids both safe and learning during the pandemic was difficult and stressful, he said, but it also forced schools to look at education more creatively.

“We had a lot of kids that did flounder during distance learning, no question,” Beekmann said. “But we also had some kids that the way they were instructed up until that point didn’t match how they wanted to present their learning, and they actually did exceptionally well in that environment.”

By the time students returned to classrooms, Beekmann said, there was a realization that, “It’s OK to offer more voice and choice for kids, and more flexibility, and not be so timebound on everything and only ‘this’ way to do it.”

Pandemic changes: videos, plus shifts in learning styles

His principal duties during the pandemic, Beekmann said, included doing virtual classroom observations, passing out materials for various cycles of physical education or music classes, serving meals that students and families could pick up from the school, and staying connected with staff and families, including figuring out what barriers families faced.

One way that he stayed connected with families was through videos featuring himself and other staff members, some of whom required some convincing to appear on video. At his recent retirement party, Beekmann said, “That was a thing that came through, is that not everybody likes a microphone as much as Tim Beekmann does.” 

Beekmann has a longtime interest in the performing arts, including singing and acting. At one point, while working as a first-grade teacher, he had a summer job as one of the musical entertainers at Valleyfair amusement park in Shakopee. 

“A lot of families and kids would come and see me, which was super fun, because then I’d let everybody in the cast know that they’re my students, and then they’d get a little more attention in the audience and stuff like that,” Beekmann said.

At school, Beekmann said, he’s noticed a “huge shift” over time in what parent and guardian involvement looks like. That could include visiting for lunch or picnics with their students or volunteering in classrooms or on field trips. 

Now, Beekmann said, “It’s a really good representation of our entire population, which I think is fantastic because it wasn’t always that way. It was very clear, some people didn’t feel like this was their school, even though they sent their kids here.”

Difficult moments have included student deaths; Beekmann says, ‘Never wish time away’

Some of the most difficult communications in his career, Beekmann said, have involved the deaths of students. Over the course of his career in Eden Prairie elementary schools, a total of five students have died.

After watching then-Principal Carol Meyer deal with the death of a student at Prairie View while he was education coordinator, Beekmann said he never thought it would happen again. “And then we did have four more students die here, and I tell you, it rocks your world,” he said. 

While social workers and district staff and administration provide support in such a situation, the principal’s position as the leader on record of a particular school means people come to them, Beekmann said. 

“You need to be strong, but also be vulnerable. To say, ‘I’m sad,’” Beekmann said. “Nobody should ever have a file, ‘death of a student,’ but I do just because it kind of helps guide some steps should it happen.” That includes understanding the grief, both immediate and recurring, of families, staff, and students, as well as balancing the need to continue functioning as a school. 

“It’s a heavy emotional lift, and I never want to have to do that again. Nobody should,” Beekmann said. 

Such experiences, Beekmann said, have led him to appreciate the concept of “never wish time away.” He also notes that he is able to view some tensions not as big things, but as just part of the cyclical nature of school. 

“It’s always busy in the fall (with) stress and excitement, and then it kind of eases out, and we kind of know what to expect,” he said. Then, at the end of the school year, “Everybody is a little more heightened because schedules are different outside of school, and the days are ticking down, and yet we still have days left of learning.”

Preschoolers, piloting Discovery Groups, and building a community

These days, those antsy students include preschoolers. During Beekmann’s time at Eden Lake, Eden Prairie Schools transitioned its elementaries away from a kindergarten to sixth grade model to a model that now houses 4-year-old pre-kindergarteners to fifth graders. 

“That’s been fun, to have little 4-year-olds in here,” Beekmann said, as well as seeing fifth graders rise up into leadership roles. 

Eden Lake and Cedar Ridge elementaries also served as the pilot locations for the Discovery Groups portion of Eden Prairie Schools’ Inspired Journey program, in which students explore pathways based on their interests. 

“That’s been fun to be on that kind of planning stage and roll it out as a pilot, and be those leaders in the community,” Beekmann said. Serving as a pilot location, he said, provided the opportunity to figure out what worked and what particularly benefited kids. 

“When I look at our instructional practices and what we do, we keep evolving over and over and over again,” Beekmann said. “We’re constantly evolving our practice, which is fantastic.”

He’s enjoyed not only the kids, but also hiring and working with what he described as great staff members, and building a community, Beekmann said. 

By the time Beekmann became principal of Eden Lake and hired Tom Walters as associate principal, “We were the fourth leadership team the school had had in a period of five to seven years,” Beekmann said. 

“I’m just so proud of the collective work we’ve been able to do over the past 12 years to come together as a really tight-knit community of educational professionals who love this community and the kids and the families that we get to serve,” Beekmann said. “Our work is so important to build that stability and consistency.”

Beekmann ‘taking his own medicine’ as a lifelong learner who takes risks

Walters is now associate principal at Forest Hills Elementary, with Meghan Gasdick serving as Eden Lake’s associate principal. After Beekmann’s retirement, Brett Lobben, a 27-year veteran of Eden Prairie Schools, will become principal of Eden Lake. 

Beekmann’s post-retirement plans, he says, are unclear right now. He might pursue something education-related, or music, or landscape and design. After 33 years of being in a profession tied closely to a calendar, preceded by his own schooling, including college, he plans to take the summer to reflect. 

“This is a whole new world for me, and I’m excited, because we always talk about being lifelong learners with our kids and ‘take a risk,’ and it’s harder for the adults to do that. So now I’m trying to take my own medicine,” Beekmann said. 

He loves what he’s doing, and loves kids, Beekmann said, but being a principal is “a lot.” At the moment, Eden Lake has 635 students coming from 540 family systems and 135 staff members. “There’s just a lot of dynamics, and it’s going great,” Beekmann said. “But because I still love it, and I’ve been here 33 years, that tells me this is the right time to stop and try something else, while I still have the physical ability to do something.”

At last year’s celebration of Eden Prairie Schools’ 100th anniversary, Beekmann said, someone mentioned that he had been with the district a third of that time. “I have never thought about wanting to go work in another school system,” he said, citing the support of the community, colleagues, and administrators. 

“So I just want to thank the Eden Prairie community and the Eden Prairie school system for taking a chance on me 33 years ago,” Beekmann said.