· By Andre Woolery
Spike Lee, Teaching as Family Tradition
Spike Lee's Mentorship Model
Spike Lee has built a 30-year teaching career alongside his filmmaking, continuing his family's educational legacy. His mother Jacquelyn was a teacher of arts and Black literature. His father Bill Lee was a jazz musician and composer. His grandmother Zimmie Retha Shelton taught art in Georgia for 50 years during Jim Crow, saving her Social Security checks the entire time to fund Lee's education at Morehouse and NYU.
Lee taught his first filmmaking course at Harvard in 1991, then joined NYU's faculty in 1993. He was appointed artistic director of the Graduate Film Program in 2002, a position he still holds, and is now a tenured professor at Tisch.
Lee is known among NYU colleagues for never missing a class in nearly three decades. He annually selects students as interns on his film productions. During the 2006 documentary When the Levees Broke, he brought 15 students onto the project. The Spike Lee Film Production Fund, which he established at NYU in 1989 (the year he released Do the Right Thing), has awarded close to $1 million in grants to support student thesis films.
Lee mentored Dee Rees during her time as his NYU student. She interned on his productions, and Lee served as executive producer on her breakthrough film Pariah, reviewing budgets, reading script drafts, and watching cuts throughout post-production. His students also include Michael Larnell, Stefon Bristol, Reinaldo Marcus Green, and Paul Dalio.
Lee explicitly connects his teaching to family tradition, stating he loves teaching because his parents and grandparents were teachers. He believes students benefit from learning from people actively doing the work they aspire to do.
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