Congratulations to Nate Dudley, who is being honored by OPRFHS with a Tradition of Excellence Award
Nate Dudley, Ed.D. is an innovative public school educator and administrator, television producer, and community organizer with a lifelong commitment to improving equity and opportunity for all communities. Nate grew up in St. Louis and moved to OPRFHS as a sophomore in 1975. He graduated valedictorian of the Class of 1978, wrote for Trapeze, and was captain of the Football, Wrestling, and Baseball teams. He attended Yale University where he played football and majored in history. While at Yale, he traveled throughout Latin America and coached high school football. After college Nate focused on community development in Brazil and studied in Bogotá, Colombia, before teaching at Benito Juarez High School in Chicago. While working towards an M.A. in Latin American Studies in 1988 from the University of Texas at Austin, Nate took groups to Central America. Nate produced news and sports at TV Globo of Brazil before becoming VP for Pan American Sports Marketing, organizing and producing international basketball tournaments throughout the Americas, including the USA Dream Team in 1992 and the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. That year, Nate began in the NYC public schools, teaching history and Spanish. Nate’s mission has always been to connect his students’ learning with the real world. In 2003 Nate became the Founding Principal of the New York Harbor School, a maritime public high school in Brooklyn. The school engages students by using NYC’s greatest resource, NY Harbor, as an outdoor classroom. In 2010 Nate led the school’s move to Governors Island, off the tip of Manhattan. The Harbor School also helped create the nationally recognized student-run Billion Oyster Project to restore the water quality of New York Harbor by placing a billion oysters there by 2035. Nate continues in NYC’s schools leading successful high school turnarounds in many of the city’s lower-performing schools. He completed his doctorate at Seton Hall University in 2017.
