“I think it was important for the kids to stand, but also for the adults in the room to see them and see that pain,” Gruwell said. Then, she asked students to participate in an activity that mirrored a lesson from the movie:Įmbedded YouTube video of Erin Gruwell at Cohoes High School
She showed several clips from the movie to the audience, made up of mostly freshmen from Cohoes, Lansingburgh, Waterford and Watervliet schools.
Gruwell’s book is the basis for the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, which starred Hilary Swank, as well as the recently released PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart. That school and education is the best way to challenge inequality and injustice,” she said. That they can write different stories for themselves. “I want them to know that change is inevitable if they choose it. Gruwell’s book The Freedom Writers Diary is a true-life story of how her unique teaching method enabled 150 students to use writing as a pathway to communicate their personal stories and change the course of their lives.
Told through anonymous entries to protect their identities and allow for complete candor, The Freedom Writers Diary is filled with astounding vignettes from 150 students who, like civil rights activist Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders, heard society tell them where to go-and refused to listen.Proceeds from this book benefit the Freedom Writers Foundation, an organization set up to provide scholarships for underprivieged youth and to train teachersFrom the Trade Paperback edition.Renowned educator and New York Times bestselling author Erin Gruwell delivered an inspirational message of hope Monday morning to an auditorium full of ninth grade students from four local districts. Inspired by reading The Diary of Anne Frank and meeting Zlata Filipovic (the eleven-year old girl who wrote of her life in Sarajevo during the civil war), the students began a joint diary of their inner-city upbringings.
Soon, their loyalty towards their teacher and burning enthusiasm to help end violence and intolerance became a force of its own. For many of these students-whose ranks included substance abusers, gang members, the homeless, and victims of abuse-Gruwell was the first person to treat them with dignity, to believe in their potential and help them see it themselves. Shocked by the teenage violence she witnessed during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Erin Gruwell became a teacher at a high school rampant with hostility and racial intolerance. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college." "With powerful entries from the students' own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students. Secretary of Education Richard Riley-and educationally. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the "Freedom Writers" in homage to the civil rights activists "The Freedom Riders."" "With funds raised by a "Read-a-thon for Tolerance," they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwell's students were "the real heroes." Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognition-appearances on "Prime Time Live" and "All Things Considered," coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust-only to be met by uncomprehending looks. "As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of "unteachable, at-risk" students.