"Diary of a Harlem School Teacher" was a first book by Jim Haskins. He was an African American elementary school teacher and during his first year of teaching (1967-1968) he notated observations of school life into a diary. This material would eventually be published in 1969. It would be his first published book during a lifetime writing over one hundred books prior to his passing in 2005. In 1994 he received the Washington Post Children's Book Guild Award for a body of work in nonfiction for your people.
Phil Gries first started teaching elementary school in Harlem New York in September 1967, the same month and year as Jim Haskins. Both their schools were located less than a dozen blocks apart. Gries taught elementary grades (second, third and fourth) at P.S. 24 located on 128th Street, and Haskins taught elementary school at P.S 92 located on 134th Street. Unknowingly, they worked only blocks apart from each other. When both began teaching, Gries was 24 years of age, and Haskins was 23 years of age. Haskins' published book "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher" profiles his observations as a teacher in his school descriptively revealing an unremitting series of catastrophes, irritations and frustrations which for Jim Haskins, at the time, made teaching for him, and learning by students, an impossible feat.
However, that is not the effect or reaction one gets after viewing Phil Gries' 50 minute documentary, "Harlem School 1970" filmed only one year after Haskin's written and published observational recounting, day by day, of his experiences as an African American teacher during his first year working in a Harlem elementary school. In a February 8, 1970 New York Times book review, columnist Ronald Gross wrote that "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher" portrays a non- sequential day by day diary revealing public school life at P.S. 92 and its pupils (97 per cent black) as one where teachers undergo a steady attrition of morale and effectiveness, with no materials to work with, a school plagued by thievery, vandalism, sickness, physical, mental and constant hostilities. In addition there were constant battles between teachers and administrators where horrendous accidents were encountered by students.
In 2008 "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher" was re-issued by The New Press. It was edited by best selling author and educator Herbert Kohl. In his forward, included in the re-issue, Kohl states, "...it is the only published diary I know of written by a black teacher who was sensitive to the needs, capacities, and culture of the students and aware of the complex racial tension and bureaucratic neglect that characterize a failing school purporting to serve poor, predominantly black students." Kohl further stated, "And, I have to admit, from what I have observed over the past few years, "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher'"could equally have been written now, in 2008, almost forty years later."
It is interesting, therefore, for many reasons, to view Gries' peerless documentary "Harlem School 1970", in sight and sound, filmed in the spring of 1970 at the new Harlem School (Community School 30) which everyone at P.S. 24 , a few blocks away, had transferred to in September 1969, located on 128th Street and Lexington Avenue. At a time when there was so little being documented in print or cinema, profiling life in an inner city elementary school ghetto it is especially revealing to observe what Phil Gries captured through his visionary camera, compared to what Jim Haskins witnessed and wrote about detailing his frustrations as an effective teacher, dealing with a strong myopic school board bureaucracy.
"Harlem School 1970" documents and observes life in an inner city school reflecting good moments as well as moments less desirable. Its communication succeeds documenting activities as a "fly on the wall," viewing, revealing many dedicated teachers who were able to make great progress teaching Harlem elementary school youngsters. We see this in most of the 18 different classrooms viewed in the film. It is not the same description that abounds in Jim Haskin's book. The comparisons of two Harlem elementary schools where he and Phil Gries taught in the same inner city ghetto, only blocks apart, create quite a different impression...two points of view. Reading Haskin's book and then screening Gries' documentary back to back allows today's educators, sociologists, and psychologists a double dose of observed reflections...time capsule historic documents which astound with varying descriptions and interpretations.
Phil Gries first started teaching elementary school in Harlem New York in September 1967, the same month and year as Jim Haskins. Both their schools were located less than a dozen blocks apart. Gries taught elementary grades (second, third and fourth) at P.S. 24 located on 128th Street, and Haskins taught elementary school at P.S 92 located on 134th Street. Unknowingly, they worked only blocks apart from each other. When both began teaching, Gries was 24 years of age, and Haskins was 23 years of age. Haskins' published book "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher" profiles his observations as a teacher in his school descriptively revealing an unremitting series of catastrophes, irritations and frustrations which for Jim Haskins, at the time, made teaching for him, and learning by students, an impossible feat.
However, that is not the effect or reaction one gets after viewing Phil Gries' 50 minute documentary, "Harlem School 1970" filmed only one year after Haskin's written and published observational recounting, day by day, of his experiences as an African American teacher during his first year working in a Harlem elementary school. In a February 8, 1970 New York Times book review, columnist Ronald Gross wrote that "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher" portrays a non- sequential day by day diary revealing public school life at P.S. 92 and its pupils (97 per cent black) as one where teachers undergo a steady attrition of morale and effectiveness, with no materials to work with, a school plagued by thievery, vandalism, sickness, physical, mental and constant hostilities. In addition there were constant battles between teachers and administrators where horrendous accidents were encountered by students.
In 2008 "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher" was re-issued by The New Press. It was edited by best selling author and educator Herbert Kohl. In his forward, included in the re-issue, Kohl states, "...it is the only published diary I know of written by a black teacher who was sensitive to the needs, capacities, and culture of the students and aware of the complex racial tension and bureaucratic neglect that characterize a failing school purporting to serve poor, predominantly black students." Kohl further stated, "And, I have to admit, from what I have observed over the past few years, "Diary of a Harlem School Teacher'"could equally have been written now, in 2008, almost forty years later."
It is interesting, therefore, for many reasons, to view Gries' peerless documentary "Harlem School 1970", in sight and sound, filmed in the spring of 1970 at the new Harlem School (Community School 30) which everyone at P.S. 24 , a few blocks away, had transferred to in September 1969, located on 128th Street and Lexington Avenue. At a time when there was so little being documented in print or cinema, profiling life in an inner city elementary school ghetto it is especially revealing to observe what Phil Gries captured through his visionary camera, compared to what Jim Haskins witnessed and wrote about detailing his frustrations as an effective teacher, dealing with a strong myopic school board bureaucracy.
"Harlem School 1970" documents and observes life in an inner city school reflecting good moments as well as moments less desirable. Its communication succeeds documenting activities as a "fly on the wall," viewing, revealing many dedicated teachers who were able to make great progress teaching Harlem elementary school youngsters. We see this in most of the 18 different classrooms viewed in the film. It is not the same description that abounds in Jim Haskin's book. The comparisons of two Harlem elementary schools where he and Phil Gries taught in the same inner city ghetto, only blocks apart, create quite a different impression...two points of view. Reading Haskin's book and then screening Gries' documentary back to back allows today's educators, sociologists, and psychologists a double dose of observed reflections...time capsule historic documents which astound with varying descriptions and interpretations.
HARLEM SCHOOL 1970 was only the fourth documentary to be filmed in Harlem, New York City, prior to 1971. Documentaries filmed were THE STREET (1948) Helen Levitt, James Agee,...Street life focusing mostly on children, THE COOL WORLD (1963) Shirley Clarke, Frederick Wiseman...An African-American youth gang in Harlem, and BLACK ROOTS (1970) Lionel Rogosin, Alan Lomax...Musicians express stories and songs about the black experience in America.
On June 24, 1970 all "wild sound" production audio cassette tapes, recorded in a hidden army bag, were delivered to Magno Sound, Inc. in Manhattan, New York for transfer to 16mm MAG tracks, used in the editing process of HARLEM SCHOOL 1970 which was completed during the month of July 1970...renting out an upright 16mm Moviola from F&B Ceco in Manhattan, New York. On August 3, 1970 an Optical track and A & B roll edited negative was delivered to Lab TV in Manhattan, New York for composite answer printing. The results had flaws and had to be done again. In retrospect, five months had elapsed from the time first film was shot using 100' rolls (30 in all, using Plus X and Tri X negative 16mm stock), commencing March 23, 1970 to the time of finally receiving a first acceptable composite answer print on August 25, 1970.
The FIRST SHOWING of the finalized composite answer print was screened at 4105 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn New York on two successive days, September 12, and 13, 1970 at 4105 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn New York to a gathering of 25 relatives and friends. The running time of this original print ran 54 minutes. The original ending montage soundtrack in the film, replaced 47 years later in the restored 50 minute version, was Ray Stevens' "Everything Is Beautiful." which was released in the spring of 1970.
Subsequently, relocating to Los Angles from New York to live and solicit work as a cinematographer, screenings of HARLEM SCHOOL 1970 was seen in its entirety by former UCLA undergraduate cinematography instructor, Haskell Wexler at his home in LA (Oct. 13, 1970), the motion picture graduate faculty department at UCLA (Nov. 4, 1970), and during the next two years to 46 different production companies in Hollywood while soliciting camera work, living frugally in a studio apartment with dear friend and fellow filmmaker Ismail H. Tsieprati, at 119 Arnaz Drive, Beverly Hills, California. Thereafter, the documentary, HARLEM SCHOOL 1970 was locked away, not to be seen again until the spring of 2017 when the restoration of the film began with bringing the best composite print available to DuArt Labs where they professionally created a high-res digitization transfer. Director / Cinematographer and dear friend Ben Wolf further accomplished an outstanding additional restoration of the documentary over a period of many months, including removal of 732 black line "eye sore" edits, tweaking sound, slight reediting and deleting certain scenes and including of a dozen outtake scenes never before used in the original version of HARLEM SCHOOL 1970. A new shortened ending audio track "This Land Is Your Land" was used to replace the original ending audio track, "Everything Is Beautiful."
Two supplemental mini-documentaries were completed in 2018 profiling seven student reunions between Phil Gries and children whom he taught in Harlem in the the second, third, and fourth grade...reuniting for the first time in half-a-century. In one of the two reunion films Phil Gries travels to the Syracuse New York home of Iris Maxwell whom Gries taught as a second grade student in the Fall of 1967 and as a third grade student in the Spring of 1968. During this spontaneous recorded visit Phil Gries also meets Iris Maxwell's mother, her five children, and 15 grandchildren. Iris describes her life (challenges and successes) the past 50 years.
During the Spring of 1970, when HARLEM SCHOOL 1970 was filmed, two years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and three years after the death of Langston Hughes the following Afro American artists, politicians, sports figures were still alive, including Paul Robeson, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Aaron Douglas, Duke Ellington, Jackie Robinson, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,and Louis Armstrong.