Miguel Cardona: Biden’s pick for Education is a teacher – and unifier

Education secretaries may not run schools directly, but they can set a tone. Those who know the Biden administration’s pick for education chief, Miguel Cardona, expect his signature spirit of inclusivity to be a unifying force.

Ahead of a Super Bowl back in the early 1980s, Gary O’Neil, a Connecticut grade-school art teacher, had a surefire class project to bond with a roomful of kids: Draw pro-football player faces with helmets on them and clothespin the paper cutouts to the window blinds. Scissors and crayons in hand, students engaged with the teacher in ways that for many – including Miguel Cardona – had lifelong reverberations.

“Miguel was always eager to learn,” says Mr. O’Neil, who met Dr. Cardona, whom the full Senate was scheduled to vote on Monday as secretary of education, as a second-grader in the diverse Meriden Public Schools system.

Miguel not only learned to love art in a way that would ultimately lead him into a teaching career, but he learned from Mr. O’Neil how a man of color – as an African American and Native American – could command a classroom.

“I remember looking up and thinking, ‘I want to be like him,’” Dr. Cardona told a local Connecticut paper.

Now Dr. Cardona is inspiring students, says Mr. O’Neil, whose middle school art class watched the Senate confirmation hearing on their laptops last month as they colored designs inspired by indigenous Panamanian textiles.