Teaching Uptown: Dr. Jose Vilson on the War on Public Education & the Kids Who Deserve Better

Dr. Jose Vilson taught math for 15 years in Washington Heights, wrote the book on race and education, and became one of the most powerful educator-voices online. On the morning after Darializa won, he sits down with Led and Octavio. 00:00 Cold Open 00:53 Welcome: The First Day after Darializa's historic win 01:30 Who Is Dr. Jose Vilson? 03:00 The Night Before 04:50 Five Hours of Sleep + a Graduation This Morning 05:00 Processing the Mamdani Tsunami what it means as a Dominican-Haitian 06:02 Representation Is Not Enough 08:15 The Community That Rejected the Ugliness 11:17 Why Jose Became an Educator 13:42 The Teacher Who Changed His Life 16:01 What Can Darializa Do for Education in District 6? 20:10 The Hispanic Society Nobody Knows About 21:01 Teaching in Washington Heights for 15 Years 25:29 Middle School Is a Fox 27:47 Discipline vs. Harshness 29:39 Social Media and the Generation He Watched Change 33:47 'I'm a Big Problem' — Origin Story 39:30 Taking Up Space as a Man of Color 42:24 Abbott Elementary and the Resource Desert 44:24 Teachers Are Rich, Right? And They Get Summers Off — The bit. (Jose does not let it slide.) 44:41 Jose's PhD: Professionalism, Race & Why Teachers of Color Leave 49:16 Microaggressions in the Workplace Aren't Micro 52:35 This Is Not a Test — The Book 56:27 The War on Education — and Why He Gets Loud 1:02:48 Are NYC Schools as Segregated as Mississippi's? 1:05:21 Where to Find Dr. Jose Vilson — theJoseVilson.com | Instagram, Threads, Facebook — 'wherever Black people get to be safer' 1:06:05 Closing — The Knicks Metaphor About Dr. Jose Vilson Dr. Jose Vilson is a Dominican-Haitian educator, author, sociologist, and one of the most prominent education-focused voices on social media. He was born on the Lower East Side (shoutout to Avenue D), attended Syracuse University on a computer science track, and pivoted to teaching after realizing he wanted community impact over a coding career. He joined the New York City Teaching Fellows program and was placed in District Six — Washington Heights — where he would spend the next fifteen years teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth grade math. Over those fifteen years, Dr. Vilson taught over a thousand students across multiple generations of the same families — brothers, sisters, tios, abuelas — becoming deeply ingratiated with the Washington Heights and Inwood community. He left not because of the kids, but because of very adult decisions made by administrators who did not appreciate what he brought to the space. His students, by contrast, called him the model teacher. Dr. Vilson holds a PhD in sociology and education with a policy concentration from Teachers College, Columbia University, where he studied the recruitment and retention of teachers of color and developed a new framework for professional identity rooted in how teachers of color define professionalism — not through dominant norms, but through preparation, dedication, and motivation. He is the author of This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education (Haymarket Books), which became a bestseller after he was rejected by twelve agents and had his blog banned from every computer in the New York City Department of Education under Bloomberg and Joel Klein. A second book, focused on math education, is forthcoming in October 2026. Contact: theJoseVilson.com | Instagram / Threads / Facebook: @theJoseVilson Support Uptown Voices Uptown Voices is a fiscally sponsored project of the Maysles Documentary Center. Your contribution is tax-deductible. Scan the QR code in the video version of this episode to donate or click this link to make a contribution: https://bit.ly/4eddiWT — even one dollar helps. Subscribe on YouTube: Uptown Collective. Share this episode with every educator, parent, and Uptown community member you know.