Harlem School 1970
- TV Movie
- 2018
- 51m
A Feature Documentary Film, Conceived, Produced, Directed, Photographed, Audio Recorded, Edited, by Phil Gries based on his observations as an elementary school teacher in Harlem, New York (... Read allA Feature Documentary Film, Conceived, Produced, Directed, Photographed, Audio Recorded, Edited, by Phil Gries based on his observations as an elementary school teacher in Harlem, New York (1967-1970).A Feature Documentary Film, Conceived, Produced, Directed, Photographed, Audio Recorded, Edited, by Phil Gries based on his observations as an elementary school teacher in Harlem, New York (1967-1970).
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Did you know
- Trivia"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.
- Quotes
School Principal: This is a very important day in the life of our school and the life of our community.
School Principal: Today marks the beginning of the dedication of our school building, the beginning of the dedication of our lives here in this school, and I feel very full inside to see children out there dressed so nicely , looking so beautiful.
- ConnectionsReferences High School (1968)
- SoundtracksThis Land Is Your Land.
- eddieyellin-31039
- Mar 15, 2024
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- $1,500 (estimated)
- Runtime51 minutes
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