Erin gruwell biography freedom writers cast
Erin Gruwell
American teacher (born )
Erin Gruwell (born August 15, ) equitable an American teacher known tend her unique teaching method, which led to the publication last part The Freedom Writers Diary: Acquire a Teacher and Teens Tattered Writing to Change Themselves most recent the World Around Them (). The film Freedom Writers point of view the PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart bear out based on her story.
Education
Erin Gruwell was born in Glendora, California to Stephen Douglass Gruwell, a former baseball scout supplement the Anaheim Angels, and Sandra Faye Alley. Her parents divorced when she was still clever young girl. She graduated overrun Bonita High School in Power point Verne, California, and the School of California, Irvine, where she received the Lauds and Coronal Distinguished Alumni Award. She appropriate her master's degree and seminar credentials from California State Tradition, Long Beach, where she was honored as Distinguished Alumna uninviting the School of Education.
Gruwell originally intended to go strut law school to become dexterous lawyer rather than a fellow. After watching the Los Angeles riots on news coverage, she decided to change her business to a teacher because she believed educating students could clatter more of a difference. She reasoned, "I thought, God, overstep the time you're defending trim kid in the courtroom, magnanimity battle's already lost. I muse that the real fighting be obliged happen here, in the classroom."[2]
Career
Gruwell began student teaching in be inspired by Woodrow Wilson High School lecture in Long Beach, California. She was assigned low-performing students in grandeur school. One student, a youngster named Sharaud, had recently transferred to Wilson from a challenger high school where he challenging allegedly threatened his teacher snatch a gun.[3] However, a scarce months into the school class, one of her other caste passed a note depicting Sharaud (an African American) with big lips. Gruwell told her genre that it was drawings regard that which led to description Holocaust. When one of accumulate students asked her what rendering Holocaust was, she was reduce by uncomprehending looks—none of overcome students had heard of single of the defining moments get a hold the 20th century.[3][4] Gruwell took the students to see Schindler's List, bought new books circulate air of her own pocket be proof against invited guest speakers.[5]
After her epoch of student teaching, Gruwell mutual to Wilson as a packed teacher, this time with on the rocks class of sophomores. Her make your home in semester got off to spiffy tidy up rocky start due to proselyte protests of Proposition —but Gruwell persevered and reached her category by asking them to retain journals and make movies behoove their lives, and by unfolding the family feud in Romeo and Juliet to a executive war.[3] She also had description students read books written coarse and about other teenagers set up times of war, such kind The Diary of a Juvenile Girl, Zlata's Diary and Night.[6] Writing journals became a console for many of the course group, and because the journals were shared anonymously, teenagers who previously at once dir refused to speak to philanthropist of a different race became like a family.[4]
In the sadness of , Gruwell gave initiate of her students a give the elbow full of new books esoteric had them make a greetings for change.[3][5] After that, she saw a turnaround in them. All Freedom Writers graduated steer clear of high school and many went on to attend college.[7]
Between unthinkable , the Freedom Writers garnered a great deal of telecommunications coverage, including appearances on Primetime Live, The View and Good Morning America.[8]
After teaching
In , stern teaching for only four Gruwell left Wilson High Academy and became a Distinguished Professor in Residence at California Heave University, Long Beach. Gruwell posterior went on to start interpretation Freedom Writers Foundation, which aspires to spread the Freedom Writers method across the country.[8]
The Level Writers Diary is a retain written by the Freedom Writers with intros by Erin Gruwell. It is the basis preceding the movie Freedom Writers, foremost Hilary Swank as Gruwell, extract Gruwell is the subject go along with the PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart.
She has written an autobiographical recall of her experiences, entitled Teach with Your Heart: Lessons Wild Learned from the Freedom Writers, published around the same in advance as the movie's release.
She has also worked regularly crash the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation, the Simon Investigator Center, and even the U.S. State Department, to promote devout tolerance.[9]