Deborah Meier
(b. 1931)
Descends from a long line of early child educators: "kindergarten teachers" who believe that the best qualities of elementary education provided the clues for transforming secondary schools. The trajectory of her work comes out of Lillian Weber and The Workshop Center for Open Education, at City College. Based on the idea of learning as active, individual, uneven and embedded in human relationship.
​
Meier's work at Central Park East Secondary 1 & 2 throughout the 1980's and the early 90's against the backdrop of Reagonomics and the Savings and Loan Debacle was to provide East Harlem and the entire education community with a tangible model of what can happen when adults act in powerful ways to deliberately sabotage "the system" and use schools as the place...for reconstructing an idea of what it might be like if we were truly citizens.
​
"The Power of Their Ideas" (Beacon Press,1995) is a collection of articles that tell her story in richly anecdotal and insightful ways. But the real gem of progressive writings are the newsletters from CPE 1 & 2, which serve as wonderful documents of the change processes and its messiness. She is important to anyone interested in public education. Like Kohl, Meier has used leadership as a way of inspiring others to transform themselves into the building of communities of inquiry. The story of District 4 in East Harlem, of which she is one of the authors, marks a critical chapter in school change and social justice in North America.