Gruwell assigned readings from "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "Zlata’s Diary." She invited speakers to class, including Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who hid Anne Frank from the Nazis. She had her students keep journals, which allowed them to explore their own personal experiences while also becoming empathetic to the experiences of others. Her unconventional teaching style moved away from the standard curriculum found in most high school English classes – Shakespeare, the classics – and helped students to understand how narrative storytelling could be more personal. When only one of the students had heard of the Holocaust, Gruwell decided to shift the focus of the class entirely. When Gruwell discovered students passing around a racist caricature of one of their classmates, she explained how this kind of imagery was comparable to the propaganda spread by the Nazis. Board of Education declared “separate but equal” unconstitutional. The documentary explores Gruwell’s experience working in a school that remained markedly segregated even decades after the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. A recently completed documentary digs into her story, which was the basis for the 2007 film, “Freedom Writers” starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell. Over the next four years, she found she changed not only her own life but also those of the 150 students that passed through her classroom.
After sharing their stories with one another, the students see their shared experience for the first time and open up to the idea that there are possibilities in life outside of making it to the age of eighteen.Erin Gruwell took a job student teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California in 1994. Knowing that every one of her students has a story to tell, Erin encourages them to keep a daily journal of their thoughts and experiences. She brings in music from the 'Hood, and literature from another kind of ghetto, The Diary of Anne Frank, and with these simple tools she opens her students' eyes to the experiences of those suffering intolerance throughout the world and the struggles of those outside their own communities. They spark a transformation in the classroom, compel them to listen and force her to take off her idealistic blinders and take in the kids' survival stories of their undeclared war on the streets. A racially motivated gang shooting witnessed by a Latina gang member in Erin's class, and an ugly racial cartoon that Erin intercepts during class, become the most unwittingly dynamic teaching aids. But then ghetto reality steps in to focus the picture. Despite her students' obstinate refusal to participate during class, Erin tries various means to engage them on a daily basis. On the surface, the only thing they share is their hatred for each other and the understanding that they are simply being warehoused in the educational system until they are old enough to disappear. Her class, a diverse group of racially charged teenagers from different walks of life-African Americans, Latinos, Asians, juvenile delinquents, gang members, and underprivileged students from poor neighborhoods-hope for nothing more than to make it through the day. Fresh-faced, idealistic twenty-three-year-old Erin Gruwell is ready to take on the world as she steps inside Wilson High School for her first day of teaching.
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