It's one of the most touching stories I have ever come across. It took one woman's courage, strength and love to make a difference in the lives of young people who hated themselves, each other, and had given up on life...until she came into their lives...
Please read their story...
The true story behind The Freedom Writers Diary began in the fall of 1994, at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, when an idealistic twenty-three-year-old high school teacher, Erin Gruwell, faced her first group of high-risk teenagers.
These teens, a diverse mix of students from some of the roughest neighborhoods in Long Beach, soon made it apparent to the young teacher that they were not interested in learning a lot of facts that wouldn’t help them survive their own life situations.
Fortunately, however, for all concerned, a monumental event occurred when Ms Gruwell found a caricature of an Afro-American student and was able to turn the situation into a character building session comparing the found picture which those caricatures drawn of the Jews during the Holocaust.
As the session progressed, many of the students began to reveal their personal anger and prejudices, as well as, their own tales of abuse including the battle scars that they had received in their own war of survival.
Erin Gruwell took on two other jobs to enable her buy books for her students who had been denied school books and access to the library...she took them on trips outside long beach, showed them a world outside what they were used, a world that was all theirs if they wanted it.
She bought each of them jotters and asked them to make an entry each day. She wanted them to write about their past experiences, their daily struggles, their anger, pain, worries, what they want for their future...
For many of the students Ms. Gruwell’s methods and educational philosophy was their first exposure to an adult that encouraged them to view diversity as a chance to learn about other cultures, to shatter old stereotypes and to change their lives for the better by ridding themselves of bigotry and preconceived opinions about themselves and others.
As they progressed from freshman to seniors under her tutorage, the students found themselves and their attitudes towards each other and learning changing to such a point that they all united dubbing themselves the Freedom Writers in honor of the original Freedom Riders involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
The book itself contains the unbelievably sad, yet quite graphic, and possibly too adult accounts of these student’s lives presented in the form of 150 personal diary accounts. Throughout their diaries, these young men and women graphically describe what they have experienced including detailed accounts of both sexual and physical abuse; explicit street language; and extreme violence.
Read the student's own word's...
Following the Rodney King Riots and the O.J. Simpson trial, the mood in our city was unsettling, and on our first day of high school, we had only three things in common: we hated school, we hated our teacher, and we hated each other.
Whether it was official or not, we all knew that we had been written off. Low test scores, juvenile hall, alienation, and racial hostility helped us fit the labels the educational system placed on us: “unteachable,” “below average,” and “delinquents.”
Somehow, Ms. G (Erin Gruwell) recognized our similarities, and used them to unite us. She gave us books written by teenagers that we could relate to, and it was through these books that we began to realize that if we could relate to a little girl who lived on the other side the world, fifty years before we did, we could certainly relate to each other.
We felt like Anne Frank, trapped in a cage, and identified with the violence in Zlata Filipovic's life. We were so inspired by the stories of Anne and Zlata, that we wrote letters to Miep Gies, and to Zlata, in hopes that they would come to Long Beach and share their stories with us. When Miep visited us, she challenged us to keep Anne's memory alive and “passed the baton” to us.
The students of room 203
It was then that we decided to begin chronicling our lives. We began writing anonymous journal entries about the adversities that we faced in our every day lives.
We wrote about gangs, immigration, drugs, violence, abuse, death, anorexia, dyslexia, teenage love, weight issues, divorce, suicide, and all the other issues we never had the chance to express before. We discovered that writing is a powerful form of self expression that could help us deal with our past and move forward.
Room 203 was like Anne's attic or Zlata's basement, it was our safe haven, where we could cry, laugh, and share our stories without being judged. We decided to call ourselves the Freedom Writers after learning about the Freedom Riders who fought against segregation during the Civil Rights Movement.
When we began writing these entries as a simple English assignment, we had no idea that they would one day be collected and published in a book, The Freedom Writers Diary.
Since graduation, we have kept our promise of trying to change education. We are pursuing our undergraduate and graduate degrees, many of us at California State University, Long Beach, while continuing to share our story and mentor students across the country about what it's like to receive a second chance.
We have created this website because we want to form a community like the one we formed in Room 203, where people feel safe, accepted, and understood. We hope that The Freedom Writers Diary will inspire you to succeed academically, change your community, and share your own story.
The hero, Erin Gruwell
Read about her...
Nothing could have prepared Erin Gruwell for her first day of teaching at Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif.
A recent college graduate, Erin landed her first job in Room 203, only to discover many of her students had been written off by the education system and deemed “unteachable.” As teenagers living in a racially divided urban community, they were already hardened by first-hand exposure to gang violence, juvenile detention, and drugs.
Enter Erin Gruwell. By fostering an educational philosophy that valued and promoted diversity, she transformed her students’ lives. She encouraged them to rethink rigid beliefs about themselves and others, to reconsider daily decisions, and to rechart their futures.
With Erin’s steadfast support, her students shattered stereotypes to become critical thinkers, aspiring college students, and citizens for change. They even dubbed themselves the “Freedom Writers” — in homage to civil rights activists “The Freedom Riders” — and published a book.
Through poignant student entries and Erin’s narrative text, the book chronicles their “eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding.”
Currently, Erin serves as president of the Freedom Writers Foundation. She raises awareness by traveling nationwide to speak inside large corporations, government institutions, and community associations.
But Erin’s capacity to convert apathy to action matters most at schools and juvenile halls, where any observer can watch the expressions of troubled teens shift from guarded cynicism to unabashed hopefulness.
Erin and her students have appeared on numerous television shows, including Oprah, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, Prime Time Live with Connie Chung, Barbara Walters’ The View, Good Morning America, and CSPAN’s Book TV.
Her class has been featured on National Public Radio and in national newspapers and People magazine.
Paramount Pictures released "Freedom Writers" in January 2007, a film based on this remarkable story featuring Hilary Swank as Erin.
Erin is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, where she received the Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Award. She earned her Master’s Degree and teaching credentials from California State University, Long Beach, where she was honored as Distinguished Alumna by the School of Education.
The Movie. Featuring Hilary Swank, Patrick Dempsey, Mario
Some members of the Freedom Writers now.
The book Freedom Writers Diary, was published in 1999.
For more info on these remarkable people, go to their website...www.freedomwritersfoundation.org.
I always say, you don't have to be a phenomenon to do phenomenal things, all you have to be is someone who cares and wants to make a difference..
To Erin Gruwell and everyone who has made a difference in the lives of others, may God continue to strenghten you.
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