Sources, Method, and Further Readings
This exhibit began as an assignment in Professor Ansley T. Erickson's "Harlem Digital Research Collaborative" course. The exhibit was originally built on materials contained in a single folder of the Morningside Area Alliance Records at the Columbia University Archives (Series III, Box 55, Folder 16: Parent-Teacher Teams), the contents of which were digitized by the course team for the Educating Harlem Project. It has been expanded here using materials collected as part of my dissertation research, including oral histories, periodical records, and secondary readings. These are organized below. For more information, please contact the creator of this exhibit, Nick Juravich.
As the Educating Harlem project grows and evolves, this project will serve as a companion to my contribution to the forthcoming edited collection Educating Harlem: Histories of Learning and Schooling in an American Community. My chapter, titled “Harlem Sophistication: Paraprofessional Educators in Harlem and East Harlem, 1963-1983," will offer an analytic overview of community-based paraprofessional programs in Harlem over two decades.
This is exhibit is a detailed case study of one program, Parent-Teacher Teams. The exhibit alludes to both the rapid growth of paraprofessional programs and ongoing conflict between parents and community activists (on the one side) and teachers, administrators, and their unions (on the other) in these years, but it provides limited context on both. Wherever possible, links to introductory materials (often journalistic in nature) have been included in the text of this exhibit to provide additional information on key events and historical changes. For more information on the broader historical context in which Parent-Teacher Teams emerged and evolved, please consult the annotated list of secondary sources below as well as the links in the text.
As I have worked on both of these projects, it has become apparent that chapters and exhibits have different logics. In the chapter, I am trying to make an argument, using sources that have been distilled to their pithiest, quickest form. When I started writing the exhibit, I was thinking the same way and foregrounding my writing, but as the exhibit evolved and passed through a process of open review, I have realized that the best parts of the exhibit cannot and should not be my writing, no matter how polished or pithy. The best parts of the exhibit are the photos, oral histories, documents, and the maps: the parts where a viewer sees, hears, and interacts with the sources.
To that end, I have included as many of these sources as possible, and the exhibit makes use of oral histories and photos of paraprofesional educators and their allies from beyond Parent-Teacher Teams. While no programs or individual experiences were exactly the same, these photos and remembrances have been chosen to provide paraprofessional perspectives that are broadly representative of the experience of paras in these years. For additional information on these individuals, please contact the exhibit creator.
Primary Sources:
Archival Collections:
Morningside Area Alliance Records, Columbia University Archives (New York, NY)
United Federation of Teachers Records, WAG.022, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York, NY)
United Federation of Teachers Hans Weissenstein Negatives Collection, PHOTOS.019.001, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (New York, NY)
Periodical Collections (accessed via Proquest Historical Newspapers):
The New York Amsterdam News
The New York Times
Oral Histories (Three of these oral histories were conducted through the Educating Harlem Project and are available in full through our archive, as linked below. All transcripts are available from the author):
Lee Farber
Marian Thom
Shelvy Young-Abrams
Secondary Sources:
Scholarship and Reports on Paraprofessional Educators and Para Programs in the 1960s and 1970s: Many of these reports can be accessed via ERIC or WorldCat.
Brickell, Henry M. et al. An In-Depth Study of Paraprofessionals in District Decentralized ESEA Title I and New York State Urban Education Projects in the New York City Schools. New York: Institute for Educational Development, 1971.
Bowma, Garda and Gordon Klopf. New Careers and Roles in the American School. New York: Bank Street College, 1968.
Kaplan, George R. From Aide to Teacher: The Story of the Career Opportunities Program. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 1977.
Mark, Jorie Lester. Paraprofessionals in Education: A Study of the Training and Utilization of Paraprofessionals in U.S. Public School Systems Enrolling 5,000 Or More Pupils. New York, Bank Street College, 1976.
Riessman, Frank and Arthur Pearl. New Careers for the Poor: The Non-Professional in Human Services. New York: The Free Press, 1965.
Introductory Materials: The following is a partial list of links to articles, websites, online resources, and digital exhibits that address some of the main themes of this exhibit in the past and present. If you would like to share a resource for this list, please contact the exhibit creator.
"Empowerment: A Voice for Paras and School Staff" American Federation of Teachers 100th Anniversary Video Segment, 2016.
"Demand for School Integration Leads to Massive Boycott - In NYC" WNYC - SchoolBook
"De facto segregation in the North: Skipwith Vs. NYC Board of Education" Jewish Women's Archive
"Paraprofessional Educators and Labor-Community Coalitions, Past and Present" Blog Post and Lesson Plan for the Labor and Working-Class History Association's Teacher/Public Sector Initiative (written by exhibit creator Nick Juravich).
Peter Aigner and Nick Juravich, eds. "New History of Education in New York City: A Roundtable" Gotham Center Blog, July-August 2016 (entries listed below, with interpretive replies from Heather Lewis and Brian Purnell)
- Michael Glass, "A Series of Blunders and Broken Promises: I.S. 201 as a Turning Point"
- Barry Goldenberg, "The Story of Harlem Prep: Cultivating a Community School in New York City"
- Nick Juravich, "Making a Paraprofessional Movement in New York City"
- Lauren Lefty "Decentralization, Decolonization, and the Not-So-Local Dimensions of Local Control"
- Dominique Jean-Louis "Education Activism in Parochial Schools in Post-Civil-Rights-Era Brooklyn"
- Jean Park "From Culturally-Driven to Market-Driven: Academic Success and Korean Cram Schools in the New York Metropolitan Area"
Works of History: The following is a partial bibliography for education and activism in New York City in the 1960s. Scholars continue to debate and re-interpret this era actively, including major events such as the 1964 Schools Boycott, the 1967-88 experiment in "community control" and the ensuing teachers' strikes, and the 1970 decentralization of New York City's school system.
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2005)
Jane Berger, “'A Lot Closer To What It Ought To Be:' Black Women and Public Sector Employment in Baltimore, 1950-1970,” in Robert Zieger, ed., Life and Labor in the New New South (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 2012)
Tamar W. Carroll, Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Christina Collins, "Ethnically Qualified’’: Race, Merit, and the Selection of Urban Teachers, 1920 - 1980 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011)
Joshua Freeman, Working Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York: The New Press, 2001)
Richard D. Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)
Sonia Song-Ha Lee, Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement : Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 2014)
Heather Lewis, New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg: Community Control and Its Legacy, (New York: Teachers College Press, 2013)
Nancy A. Naples, Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, and the War on Poverty, (New York: Routledge, 1998)
Daniel Perlstein, Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (New York: Peter Lang, 2004)
Jonna Perrillo, Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2012)
Jerald E. Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)
Wendell Pritchett Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002)
Diane Ravitch, The Great Schools Wars: New York City 1805-1973 (New York, Basic Books, 1973).
Clarence Taylor, ed. Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era (New York, Columbia Univerisy Press, 2011)
Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (New York: Columbia University Press: 2013).
Clarence Taylor, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools (New York: Columbia University Press: 1997)