Diary of a Harlem School Teacher »

Jim Haskins was the author of more than a hundred books. In 1994 he received the Washington Post Children's Book Guild Award for a body of work in nonfiction for young people. He died in 2005. Series editor Herbert Kohl is the National Book Award-winning author of more than forty books. He lives in Point Arena, California.

This classic work, long out of print, recounts the experiences of an African American teacher during his first year working in a Harlem elementary school in the 1960s. Though written more than forty years ago, the diary still rings true to the experience of many beginning teachers today. The New York Times Book Review called Haskins's diary "a weapon—cold, blunt, painful" and Look magazine said it "will be read a generation hence as a classic of one aspect of American education." As Herbert Kohl discusses in his new foreword, Diary of a Harlem Schoolteacher is a dramatic reminder of how much educational work there is still to do.