In 1993, Erin Gruwell was trying to instill some kind of order to her inner-city classroom in Los Angeles, California. Her job-teaching a class of under-privileged students with predominantly African and Mexican backgrounds in the wake of the racially charged 1992 LA riots-was proving to be all but impossible.
Then, one day, an unlikely opportunity presented itself: she caught a student passing a note. The note contained a sketched caricature of one of her most disruptive students, Sharaud (an African-American) which depicted him with over-sized lips. Deeply troubled by this overt racism, Gruwell explained to the class that these types of caricatures were also drawn by Nazis as propaganda during the holocaust. When not one student knew what the holocaust was Gruwell made it her mission to teach these young adults about tolerance and respect. Her approach, which was unique in that school, was to show these “unteachable” students respect, and to teach them in a way that would motivate them to be willing participants in the learning process.
“I had to find lyrics and storylines within hip hop that would really make sense to my students,” said Gruwell who was recently in Toronto promoting Freedom Writers, a new feature film directed by Richard LaGravenese that is based on her story.
The quest for common ground challenged Gruwell to find connections between the course curriculum and the school of hard knocks.
“If I want to talk about transformation, I could look at the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet, and juxtapose that to the Bloods and the Crips. Or I could look at Tupac’s scenario about being called a ‘rose in concrete’ and juxtapose that to Gertrude Stein’s ‘a rose is a rose is a rose.’ What it did was it activated my students prior knowledge.”
After getting her class to accept her as their instructor, her next challenge was to get them to accept each other as classmates, a feat she accomplished by starting a journal project where students could write anonymously about their lives and bond over hearing about situations similar to their own.
She also introduced her class to The Diary of Anne Frank, which Gruwell thought fitting because it features a teen who is also faced with violence and intolerance in her community, and who eventually achieves a liberation through writing.
“There’s something incredible about writing. When you pick up a pen, suddenly you bear witness to your life and all of the things that you’ve seen,” quips Gruwell. These diaries were eventually compiled to be the subject of a collaborative book, The Freedom Writers Diary, which then became the basis for the film, which stars Hilary Swank as Gruwell. Gruwell and her “Freedom Writers” still keep in touch after more than a decade, and have formed an foundation dedicated to reducing highschool drop out rates in underprivileged communities.
“We’re fighting the bureaucracy of education, and we’re fighting for reform in classrooms. It’s a different battle, but it’s a battle that I feel is worth the fight.”
One issue Gruwell’s success is sure to raise is why her achievement as a teacher-getting inner-city kids to be excited about education and creative self-expression-is so extraordinary in the first place.
Freedom writers in currently in wide release.
