Freedom Writers

This was such a good book-hard to put down and really powerful. It made me feel good even though it dealt with tough subjects. This book was about a first year English teacher named Erin Gruwell (like me this year) who worked in an inner city high school in Long Beach, CA, and was given the “reject” kids, who were more used to using guns than pens and were not expected to graduate high school. Ironically, many of them ended up graduating from college.
The book is made up of diary entries from the four years she taught the students, starting as freshman. She taught them how to use writing to empower themselves and the world around them, and taught her English class using examples of intolerance to teach her students tolerance. Reading about how much Erin went above and beyond for her students-staying til 11 at night, taking them on field trips and getting guest speakers-sometimes coming out of her own pocket(she worked another job on the weekends), it kind of makes you feel like an inadequate or lazy teacher! Yet it is inspiring, because we can always be doing more.
I really enjoyed how all of the different diary entries, with different voices and styles of writing obviously because they are each by individual students, chronicle the events that took place in Erin’s class over four years. As a reader, you share with their joys, sorrows, disappointments, accomplishments, trials, and victories. The diaries chronicle the first days of school to graduation, from first negative and skeptical, cynical impressions of Ms. Gruwell, to eventual excitement, safety, and familial feel of her class.
You read about the tragic home lives of students-everything from poverty to gang violence to molestation. You also read about students reconciling with their families, getting over drug habits, breaking free of gangs, and getting their grades up, ultimately finding a place to belong and gaining more confidence as people. You see students of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds getting along. You are amazed at the changes taking place in the lives of these teens. We see a white boy relating to Maya Angelou’s “I know Why a Caged Bird Sings,” and students who before failed classes make deep connections to advanced books like Animal Farm.
The students in Ms. Gruwell’s class go to Washington to meet the Secretary of Education, riding a bus like the original Freedom Riders they were named after, and walk around DC covering up graffiti of swastikas-the same kids who used to deface property. The reader then shares in their sorrow-that another student at their school killed a little girl while they were away doing a peace march.
Ms. Gruwell’s students meet Zlata, a girl in Bosnia much like Anne Frank, and the woman who houses Anne Frank in Amsterdam. They received an award for this in NY, get on ABC Prime Time Live, and eventually sign a book deal. The end is bittersweet; one student died of cystic fibrosis, but the irony is many teens their age were expected to die in gang violence.
One student reminds us that although Erin did amazing things for her students, you can only “lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink.” They still had to do the work. However, what a lesson teachers can learn from leadership like Erin’s. I heard that she now teaches classes on teaching educators; it is sad on one hand that she is not in the classroom anymore, but opens up doors for new teachers like me to lead.