Pedro Noguera Leaves To LA and We’re The Remainder
The first time I got to meet Pedro was November 24, 2009 at around 9am. My principal took a colleague and I to one of the bigger policy conferences I’ve ever been to. By then, I gained a notorious voice for speaking up within connected education circles, but I didn’t see myself making many ripples in the iron-clad colossus that is NYC Public Schools. The bagels came with delicious spreads, and the coffee still steamed as it flowed into my cup at NYU’s Metro Center. Just then, a 6’1″ gentleman stepped to the table, poked every few seconds by a graduate student / handler to prepare for this conference.
One of the first things I managed to muster out of my mouth was, “Nice to meet you. I’ll be taking notes and blogging about it.”
Without missing a beat, he replied with a smirk, “Good, good.”
Despite what we thought in my circle, edu-blogging wasn’t that big a deal to the general populace, even in 2009. Yet, only a week after Pedro’s event, I’d gotten a chance to witness another one of the defining moments in NYC education history in the last 15 years: Chancellor Joel Klein listening to Diane Ravitch reading from her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System for ChalkbeatNY fka GothamSchools. Both Ravitch and Noguera made an impact on my educational activism for very different reasons, Ravitch the reformed reformer / scholar and Noguera the people’s public edu-intellectual. Few education professors had the clout to demand audience with Chancellor Klein, and, within that handful, few enjoyed the celebrity of Noguera and Ravitch.
From my perspective, I had lots to learn from both. Dr. Ravitch used the spotlights she attained to Pedro Noguera Leaves To LA and We're The Remainder | The Jose Vilson: