After the riots in London I was wondering where the kids found the inspiration and motivation to study and I came across this incredible story.
The Freedom Writer’s Diary chronicles the four years of Erin Gruel’s teaching experiences at Wilson High School in Long Beach, CA in the mid 1990s.
As a first year teacher, Erin was given the hard to teach, the kids who were“at-risk” and “most likely to drop out ”. Through a series of unconventional methods, such as field trips to Holocaust museums and dinners at fancy restaurants she stimulates and reaches out to these teens.
She took on two extra jobs in order to pay for school books and field trips that her school administrators would not fund. She faced opposition from her colleagues who did not value her eagerness and teaching efforts.
Erin encouraged third students to keep a diary and to communicate within the dairy in the way they want.
Some wrote poetry, some drew pictures, and others wrote incredibly detailed accounts of their lives. The diary entries are anonymous, but intensely detail the lives of teens from abusive households, living in fear and in shame of their parents, their neighbours, and their friends. We see these teens deal with sexual, physical and mental abuse. Each day is a struggle to keep going, and make an effort to stay motivated.
It is through these journals and through room 203 that many students find unexpected support. We see these teens grow and change in the course of these four years thanks to the writings of those such as Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo and Durango Street.
Erin Gruwell went out of her way to learn about her students, and writings that these kids could relate to. She showed these kids that hope exists and as well as their future as long as they strive for the best. We see these kids go from cutting class, to graduation day and going on to major universities. We see the change that Ms. G and the Freedom Writers had on the world around them, bringing Zlata and Miep Gies to their school through fundraising events and emotionally driven, but still well written letters.
I wonder what the moral of the story is for us and in some way we could relate the situation of those kids to the London riots.
The following film quote came to mind,, We will stay in a dark room until someone will come and turn the light, or we decide to learn how to switch off the light by yourself’’"until someone comes and turns on. What I think important is to believe and is that what Erin Gruwell did?
She believed in those kids and that something could change no matter what.
I wish that everybody were inspired to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
