As schools become political battlegrounds, one educator sees room for hope

When Noreen Naseem Rodríguez was 32, she stumbled on a few sentences in a book that changed the course of her work as an educational researcher: In 1587, she read, Filipino sailors aboard the merchant ship Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza landed in Morro Bay, California—more than 30 years before Pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts.