Freedom Writers

“Dear Diary,
Tomorrow morning, my journey as an English teacher officially begins. Since first impressions are so important, I wonder what my students will think about me. Will they think I’m out of touch or too preppy? Or worse yet, that I’m too young to be taken seriously? Maybe I’ll have them write a journal entry describing what their expectations are of me and the class.

Even though I spent last year as a student teacher at Wilson High School, I’m still learning my way around the city. Long Beach is so different than the gated community I grew up in. Thanks to MTV dubbing Long Beach as the “gangsta-rap capital” with its depiction of guns and graffiti, my friends have a warped perception of the city, or L B C as the rappers refer to it. They think I should wear a bulletproof vest rather than pearls. Where I live in Newport Beach is a utopia compared to some of neighborhoods seen in a Snoop Doggy Dogg video. Still, TV tends to blow things out of proportion.

The school is actually located in a safe neighborhood, just a few miles from the ocean. Its location and reputation make it desirable. So much so that a lot of the students that live in what they call the “’hood” take two or three buses just to get to school every day. Students come in from every corner of the city: Rich kids from the shore sit next to poor kids from the projects…there’s every race, religion, and culture within the confines of the quad. But since the Rodney King riots, racial tension has spilled over into the school. Due to busing and an outbreak in gang activity, Wilson’s traditional white, upper-class demographics have changed radically. African Americans, Latinos, and Asians now make up the majority of the student body.

As a student teacher last year, I was pretty naïve. I wanted to see past color and culture, but I was immediately confronted by it when the first bell rang and a student named Sharaud sauntered in bouncing a basketball. He was a junior, a disciplinary transfer from Wilson’s crosstown rival, and his reputation preceded him. Word was that he had threatened his previous English teacher with a gun (which I later found out was only a plastic water gun, but it had all the makings of a dramatic showdown). In those first few minutes, he made it brutally clear that he hated Wilson, he hated English, and he hated me. His sole purpose was to make his “preppy” student teacher cry. Little did he know that within a month, he’d be the one crying...

The smell of marijuana greets me at the door, followed closely by a disheveled woman. She asks what I want, and I tell her that I have come for the girls. She calls to them: “The lady is here.” The girls dart to the door, excited and expectant, each asking what the plans are for the evening and what they will eat.

In this neighborhood grown men run around playing with toy guns only weeks after a neighborhood teen was shot to death on his front porch. In this neighborhood eight- and nine-year old girls discuss rape in the way other girls might discuss the latest episode of Hannah Montana. I know of an alcoholic grandmother who has custody of her thirteen-year-old granddaughter. Here, drugs are rampant. The apartment complex grounds are littered with “Little Hugs” bottles and cigarette butts.

How does hope emerge from such a place? It comes with a field trip to a local college. It comes from meeting a woman who is vice-mayor. It comes from witnessing a performance of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. It comes when the girls do community service, perform for elderly residents at a nursing home, or march proudly in a college homecoming parade.

I am often asked why I meet with the girls one day a week after working full-time with middle school students. I was a little girl once, I reply. There were women who gave my life meaning and who inspired me: my grandmother and mother, who believed in the power of books and reading though neither had a formal education; the teachers in my segregated public schools who valued me as a learner and believed, even in those tough times, that “education is the great equalizer”; the Sunday school teachers and ladies of the community who reinforced behaviors taught at home and at school.

The wonder that these girls express at things that I take for granted constantly amazes me. I am reminded of the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and am convinced that these girls will go places that they never imagined for themselves. I am thrilled to encourage and inspire them to go to the “places they will go.” ~ Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary

“Following the L.A. Riots, 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.

Many of the students who entered Erin Gruwell’s freshman English class weren’t thinking about how to make it to graduation, but how they could make it to sixteen years old. Racial and gang tension had peaked and a record 126 murders had occurred in Long Beach that year. With the external stresses of a divided city, the students of Room 203 were not concerned with the education system that had already failed them on multiple occasions. Gruwell’s students had been written off as unteachable and below average.

Regardless of what her peers tried to tell her, Gruwell sought to engage her jaded students. She chose, instead, to listen to what they had to say and saw beyond the stigma of their low test scores. She brought in literature written by teenagers who looked and talked like them, who faced struggles just like theirs. The students soon realized that if they could relate to the complete strangers in their books, they could certainly relate to one another.

They started to form a diverse family, accepting of all, that they named the “Freedom Writers” after the 1960s Civil Rights activists, the Freedom Riders. In this newly formed safe space, the Freedom Writers began writing anonymous journal entries about the adversity they faced. They felt free to write about gang violence, abuse, drugs, love, and everything else real teenagers dealt with on a daily basis. The rawness and honesty of their journals was published in a book called, “The Freedom Writers Diary,” which became an instant “New York Times” Best Seller.

All 150 Freedom Writers graduated in 1998. Many have gone on to pursue higher education and lucrative careers. The Freedom Writers Foundation was created shortly after to help other educators mirror Erin and the Freedom Writers’ accomplishments and ensure a quality education for all students.

In order to replicate the success they had in classrooms and communities across the world, Erin Gruwell and the original Freedom Writers founded the Freedom Writers Foundation. The mission of the Freedom Writers Foundation is to be an advocate for all students and teachers by providing tools that facilitate student-centered learning, improve overall academic performance, and increase teacher retention.”

“My diary partially inspired the Freedom Writers and maybe some other people to start writing their own diaries, and do something about the situations they found themselves in. I have heard people say that it is not what happens to us that matters, but how we deal with it—and the Freedom Writers are a perfect example. They could have chosen to fight racism with racism, hate with hate, pain with pain. But they did not. If we all do what the Freedom Writers have done, and choose to deal with inhumane situations in a humane way, we can turn the world around and create positive lessons for ourselves and for others.

Unfortunately, I have realized that we cannot completely erase all the evil from the world, but we can change the way we deal with it, we can rise above it and stay strong and true to ourselves. And most important, we can inspire others—this is what makes us human beings, this is what can make us immortal…” ~ Erin Gruwell, Dublin, July 1999

~ Toastmasters International has named Erin Gruwell its 2017 Golden Gavel recipient for her commitment to improving education by offering training and curriculum to teachers, and scholarships and outreach for at-risk youth. Gruwell exemplifies the Toastmasters values through her integrity, her respect for the individual, her ¬service to others and her focus on motivating individuals to become their best selves. Gruwell will be honored with this prestigious recognition in August at the 86th Annual Toastmasters International Convention in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As a high school English teacher, Gruwell encouraged her dis¬engaged students to write about their life challenges in diaries. She eventually captured her former students’ collective journey in the best-selling book, The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them, which also became a critically acclaimed movie starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell. She then founded the Freedom Writers Foundation, which offers programs to improve the education of all students. She created the Freedom Writers Methodology, a progressive teaching philosophy and curricula and uses it to teach educators around the world how to implement her innovative lesson plans in their own classrooms.

After the release of the book and movie, Gruwell began receiving requests for the Freedom Writers (her former students) to speak around the world. Although the students had bared their souls in the diaries, the prospect of standing before audiences and telling their very personal stories was daunting. Gruwell knew a colleague in Toastmasters and arranged for the students to attend an eight-week Speechcraft session at the Freedom Writers Foundation in Long Beach, California. “The Toastmasters leaders made it their mission to model what great speaking is for us, to help ease the Freedom Writers’ anxiety about presenting and to encourage us all to take risks as speakers,” Gruwell says.

“Toastmasters became a game-changer for us.” The group soon chartered its own club, Freedom Writers Toastmasters, in September 2014. Brimming with confidence and polished speaking skills, the Freedom Writers now travel the globe presenting to audiences of vulnerable and voiceless youth, with a message of hope that they, too, can overcome enormous odds to transcend their circumstances.

A new documentary titled Freedom Writers: Stories from an Undeclared War is set to be released next spring through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States.... To learn more about Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, read the cover article in the May Toastmaster magazine."