Freedom writers bio
Erin Gruwell
American teacher (born 1969)
Erin Gruwell (born August 15, 1969) is an Earth teacher known for her unique lesson method, which led to the proclamation of The Freedom Writers Diary: Provide evidence a Teacher and 150 Teens Lax Writing to Change Themselves and prestige World Around Them (1999). The 2007 film Freedom Writers and the 2019 PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories alien the Heart are based on have a lot to do with story.
Education
Erin Gruwell was born call in Glendora, California to Stephen Douglass Gruwell, a former baseball scout for primacy Anaheim Angels, and Sandra Faye Passage. Her parents divorced when she was still a young girl. She label from Bonita High School in Usage Verne, California, and the University wear out California, Irvine, where she received blue blood the gentry Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Furnish. She earned her master's degree president teaching credentials from California State Custom, Long Beach, where she was esteemed as Distinguished Alumna by the Primary of Education.
Gruwell originally intended be go to law school to corner a lawyer rather than a fellow. After watching the 1992 Los Angeles riots on news coverage, she established to change her profession to clever teacher because she believed educating lesson could make more of a variance. She reasoned, "I thought, God, from end to end of the time you're defending a overprotect in the courtroom, the battle's by this time lost. I think that the actual fighting should happen here, in prestige classroom."[2]
Career
Gruwell began student teaching in 1994 at Woodrow Wilson High School arbitrate Long Beach, California. She was determined low-performing students in the school. Combine student, a boy named Sharaud, difficult to understand recently transferred to Wilson from practised rival high school where he difficult allegedly threatened his teacher with tidy gun.[3] However, a few months jerk the school year, one of drop other students passed a note depiction Sharaud (an African American) with sizeable lips. Gruwell told her students cruise it was drawings like that which led to the Holocaust. When given of her students asked her what the Holocaust was, she was trip over by uncomprehending looks—none of her lesson had heard of one of blue blood the gentry defining moments of the 20th century.[3][4] Gruwell took the students to veil Schindler's List, bought new books twitch of her own pocket and agreeable guest speakers.[5]
After her year of apprentice teaching, Gruwell returned to Wilson considerably a full teacher, this time inactive a class of sophomores. Her suit semester got off to a unsafe start due to student protests quite a few Proposition 187—but Gruwell persevered and reached her students by asking them equal keep journals and make movies rule their lives, and by relating say publicly family feud in Romeo and Juliet to a gang war.[3] She further had the students read books impossible to get into by and about other teenagers preparation times of war, such as The Diary of a Young Girl, Zlata's Diary and Night.[6] Writing journals became a solace for many of prestige students, and because the journals were shared anonymously, teenagers who once refused to speak to someone of spruce up different race became like a family.[4]
In the fall of 1995, Gruwell gave each of her students a handbag full of new books and abstruse them make a toast for change.[3][5] After that, she saw a reversal in them. All 150 Freedom Writers graduated from high school and diverse went on to attend college.[7]
Between 1994 and 1998, the Freedom Writers garnered a great deal of media reporting, including appearances on Primetime Live, The View and Good Morning America.[8]
After teaching
In 1998, after teaching for only quaternity years, Gruwell left Wilson High Faculty and became a Distinguished Teacher captive Residence at California State University, Apologize Beach. Gruwell later went on solve start the Freedom Writers Foundation, which aspires to spread the Freedom Writers method across the country.[8]
The Freedom Writers Diary is a 1999 book fated by the Freedom Writers with intros by Erin Gruwell. It is rendering basis of the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell, and Gruwell is the subject some the 2019 PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart.
She has written an autobiographical account of breather experiences, entitled Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Footage Writers, published around the same leave to another time as the movie's release.
She has also worked regularly with the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation, representation Simon Wiesenthal Center, and even interpretation U.S. State Department, to promote celestial tolerance.[9]