Perspectives: Urban Educator Pedro Noguera

Urban Educator Pedro Noguera will give a keynote address at The 19th Annual National Service-Learning Conference, April 9-12, in Minneapolis.

Pedro Noguera — professor at New York University's School of Education, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings — knows the challenges of urban education. His interest in service-learning tracks back to his political work in Berkeley, Calif., when he served as Executive Assistant to Mayor Loni Hancock. Challenged by colleagues to get youths involved in government, he has been helping young people gain the skills to assume these leadership roles ever since.

In a recent talk at the University of Minnesota's Konopka Institute, he called on schools to be "the core of the social infrastructure of our communities," sites that can engender this kind of "civic capacity-building" in young people — capacity that will ultimately result in more vital urban infrastructures across the country.

"The big problem in many communities across the country, particularly poor communities, is the fact that you have a sense of hopelessness," Noguera says. "So a lot of times the message we send to poor children is that their best bet is to leave. Get your education and get out. … What we don't show them is how they can use their education to improve the communities where they live, to make a difference."

Noguera began helping young people make a difference while teaching at an alternative school for so-called "at risk" students, whose pasts often included gang involvement. Because the school was next door to a pre-school, Noguera began a cross-age reading program. In this setting, the tutoring sessions helped transform lives across all ages. "We found that giving our students an opportunity to help others had a remarkable effect on their behavior and gave them a sense of responsibility."

Noguera sees this type of capacity-building as central to strengthening urban communities. "Most of the advances in democracy that have occurred in this country were made possible by people who served — as voter registration workers in the segregated south, as supporters of the grape boycott in California that brought union rights to migrant workers, as advocates for the rights of the homeless," he says. "Typically they served without any regard for whether or not they would experience benefits from their service. They served understanding that when we give of ourselves we make it possible for others to live in a more free and just society. This is the real promise of service-learning."