...Freedom Writers Self-concept is the entirety of one's beliefs and attitudes towards their personal existence. Many people, depending on life experience, feel they have superiority or are at a disadvantage because of the group they fall into. This is seen in the movie Freedom Writers, each and every student has their own perspective on their own self-concept. These students end up finding similarities between each other because they have some sort of connection but only find it once they learn and open up about their struggles. There are many concepts of the self that can be found throughout the entire film. Empathy is one of the major concepts of The Freedom Writers. Empathy is the ability to put yourself into another person’s experience and to completely understand the other’s thoughts, feelings and way of being. (P.78) An example of empathy is when Mrs. G reads the journals and can really put herself into their shoes and really understand their individual experiences. If Mrs. G didn’t have a strong sense of empathy for the students, she never would have been able to help them conquer their personal demons. Mrs. G used a strategy called identity management to connect with the students. Identity management is when communicators use certain strategies to influence the way others view them. (P.81) An example of this is when Mrs. G plays Tupac in an effort to relate to the kids in the class. She hopes to have them see that they may have something in common...
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...[Author’s Name] [Instructor’s Name] [Course title] [Date] Freedom Writers- Movie Review “Freedom Writers" has a great advantage over all those other idealistic and somewhat naïve teachers who come to inner city schools and initially face setbacks but persevere and eventually gain the students' interest and teach them to achieve far beyond the expectations of society movies. Hilary Swank who stars as Erin Gruwell is an idealistic and somewhat naive new teacher who wears pearls and too-short skirts and is convinced she can help her low-achieving inner-city students. These kids though "kids" is the wrong word considering the advanced age of most of the actors live the worst lives possible in America. Every single one in the class of high school freshmen had a friend who has been killed, and most know more than one. Every single one (except the white kid) has been shot at. None of them (except the white kid) has ever heard of the Holocaust. The popular movie, Freedom Writers, is based on the true story of a Long Beach (CA) teacher who mentors a group of students following the LA riots of 1990. The teacher, Erin Gruwell, finds herself hated by her ethnically diverse "gangbanging" students (LaGravenese). Through writing, both Gruwell and her students work through one of the most tumultuous times of racial tension in the United States since the 1960s (Gruwell). In other words, the movie is indulging in a little hard-knock overkill. Every one of these 14-year-olds has been shot...
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...Woodrow Wilson is a formerly high-achieving school which has encountered some difficulties bearing its new racial integration plan. Gruwell's enthusiasm is challenged when she finds her class is composed of "at-risk" students, the "untouchables," and not the eager-for-college students she expected. Her students self-segregate into racial groups within the classroom. This is problematic, as gang fights break out and, consequently, most of her students stop attending class. Not only is Gruwell challenged with gaining her students' trust on personal and academic levels, but she must do so with very little support from her professional peers and district higher-ups. For example, her department head refuses to provide Gruwell with an adequate number of books for her class because she insists they will get damaged and lost. Instead, she suggests that Gruwell focuses on instilling concepts of discipline and obedience in her classroom. One night, two high school students, Eva (April Lee Hernández), a Latino-American girl and narrator for much of the film, and a Cambodian refugee, Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan), frequent the same convenience store. An additional student, Grant Rice (Armand Jones) is frustrated at losing an arcade game and demands a refund from the store owner. When he storms out, Eva's boyfriend Paco attempts a drive-by shooting, intending to kill Grant but misses, accidentally killing Sindy's boyfriend. As a witness, Eva must testify at court; she intends to guard "her own" in...
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...Teacher Evaluation In the “Freedom Writers,” a teacher was needed to teach freshmen English at Woodrow Wilson High School and Erin Gruwell took on that challenge. As it turned out, it was nothing like what she imagined it to be. There was racial segregation in the classroom and all her students had problems outside and inside of school. That however, did not stop her from being passionate about her job. She used new techniques to help her students become interested in the class while learning and made many sacrifices for those kids which no other teacher was willing to do. Although everyone thought the kids in room 203 were the “unteachables”, Mrs. Gruwell used her own ways to educate them and made a huge impact to those students’ lives including her three of her most difficult students: Eva, Jamal, and Marcus. When the bell rang for class, Mrs. Gruwell’s expectations went down the drain as most of her students came in her class late and the ones that showed up displayed disrespect and no interest for school. Even though her students were not what she expected them to be, she found a way to interest them into learning using her own unique ways. She entertained them in many ways such as music, and using music lyrics to teach instead of poetry that bored the whole class. She made the class time fun by having many activities and gave each of the students their own journals to write in and share about their everyday lives. Since the school was not willing to give students books...
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...Film Application Paper The Freedom Writers Organization Development Seminar Two Prof. Williams Rebecca Shafer 1/17/2012 Film Application Paper: The Freedom Writers In the case of the Freedom Writers, the teacher was the Practitioner and the students were the team. When she first came into that situation the team was not a team they were disorganized and had no sense of teamwork. At the time the teacher/practitioner came into the classroom and was an outsider was not sure what exactly to expect or exactly what route to take. As the teacher/practitioner spent more time with the class, she learned a little each day of what to expect from the class and through trial and error was finding a way to make them a team. The teacher had to use different techniques to find out which technique was going to work the best with the class to make them a team. Once she got the class to start to trust her then she could start using other techniques to get them closer together. She found that she had to get creative in order for them to listen to her and also for them to get involved with the rest of the class. As an outsider coming in she not only got resistance from the class that she was trying to get to work together but she also met resistance from other teachers and faculty members as well. Erin Gruwell, was faced with all kinds of issues. She had to look at the whole situation from an outsider’s position. She had to diagnose all the problems of the class and the faculty...
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...A large problem facing Erin Gruwell in Freedom Writers (2007) was although an integrated school system was considered a good thing at this point in history, the integraton created some issues. Society was not looking at the individuals in each school and examining how this sudden integration of different cultures would affect those involved. By suddenly uprooting so many students and drastically changing their environment, many teens were effectd in an adverse manner and had no desire to participate in school or continue their education. Erin Gruwell became the sole pathfinder practitioner for these troubled teens (Brown, 2011, p. 91). She challenged authority within the school system and fought to create a better teaching environment. Another problem facing these students was the school administrations “white” view of teaching. The other teachers did not take the time or care enough to make the curriculum something the students could relate to. These inner city kids were surrounded by violence, racism, abuse and no home life or positive influences in their lives. Each student felt alone and that no one understood their life or story, they took some refuge and made friends with in their own cultures and gangs that were separated by race. The school administrators were more concerned with getting students through the school system then truly educating them or inspiring them to improve their lives. Since there was not trust between the students and teachers...
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...break through the invisible barrier that kept her students from learning. What she did know is that everyone in the school had written off these teens. After learning about the hardships in these teens’ lives — an environment full of racism, rejection and the tragedy of seeing no hope for the future — she understood why they saw no point in reading and writing. Gruwell also understood their need for self-expression, so her students began writing anonymous journal entries about their lives. After seeing a film about the Freedom Riders, a group of teenagers who showed remarkable bravery during the Civil Rights Movement, the class decided to call themselves the Freedom Writers. In 1999, their entries became a best-selling book called The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. In 2007, Hilary Swank played Gruwell in the Freedom Writers film. Today, Gruwell runs The Freedom Writers Foundation, which she started in 1997. The foundation trains educators to use innovative techniques to change the world, one class at a time. Gruwell earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of...
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...Erin Gruwell, author of “The Freedom Writers Diary” and founder of the Freedom Writers Foundation, spoke on encouraging diversity and understanding in a lecture titled “Teaching Tolerance” in Moreau Hall’s Little Theater on Friday. Penn High School sophomore Katie Laiman approached Saint Mary’s with the idea to invite Gruwell to speak as a part of Girls Scout Gold Award project. “I think this talk was really impactful, and I hope everyone that was here takes a lot from it,” Laiman said. Gruwell said she became a teacher because she wanted to stand up for kids who did not have a voice. “Before there was a book, before there was a movie, there was a group of students who were tired of being invisible, tired of being on the fringe and just wanted to matter, just wanted to be heard,” she said. Gruwell said when she was in graduate education classes she noticed a disconnection between theory and practice. “I realized this when I walked into my first classroom and my students could care not less about stories, and books, and Shakespeare and tales about Homer,” she said. “My students cared about would I make it home alive, am I gonna get home and see my hardworking mom with those cockroaches and those rats in that tiny one bedroom housing project, and will there be dinner, would their be food on the table, are those cupboards going to be bare again.” Gruwell said all of her students buried friends due to senseless gang violence by the age of 14, and it made...
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...Freedom Writers Diaries – Their Story, Their Words, Their Future One of the main concerns that Erin Gruwell would face was teaching a group of kids that the school system process having an integrated school was a good thing in front of board members that had issues at that certain time in history. The school system did not look at how this integration with mixed cultures would affect everyone involved. This system would suddenly take them out of their own element and put them with mixed cultures that would drastically change their way of looking at life. This change would only drive the kids back future with no desire to learn or participate in continuing their education. Comparing this to the business world, you would look at Erin Gruwell would become a style of pathfinder practitioner for the inner city mixed culture teenagers (Brown, 2011 p 92). Erin Gruwell could see what potential each one of her students had and would fight the school system to help create a different approach and style for the kids to open their minds toward a positive life with a future. This is compared to big business or a corporation showing how starting out in a large environment how one can get lost like a child in a large school. Many may want to avoid taking chances or even give ideas because of stepping on someone’s toes in business or getting shot at from another child in school because of the way they looked at someone. Another issue facing Erin Gruwell was how administration would look...
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...The Freedom Writers Freedom Writers was released in 2007 on January 7. It was based on the book the Freedom Writer's Diary by Erin Gruwell, who wrote the story based on a school name Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Eastside Long Beach, California. This film tells a story about Erin Gruwell, who is a young teacher who just started her job as a freshman and sophomore English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School. She is soon challenged by a group of Black, Latino and Asian gang members who had excessive hate for the new teacher, Erin Gruwell. The most significant themes in The Freedom Writers is tolerance, journal writing/empowerment, determination and last but not least is freedom. Erin Gruwell, the teacher starts on her first day at Woodrow Wilson High School. She is unprepared for the nature of her classroom because the students live by their generations history of strict rules and rivalries amongst other “groups.” Most of the students in her classroom are in gangs and almost everybody knows somebody that has been killed by gang violence. Once she steps in the class, Gruwell quickly learned that her students had more to worry about than homework; her students went home to gunfire, gangs, drugs, and a host of other difficult situations. Gruwell did not know what she was getting into. The students was convinced that they didn’t have nothing in common, or that they could learn from a white teacher because she never experience what they previously and currently...
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...Elisha Jane D. Serrano A55 TREDONE Reaction Paper on FREEDOM WRITERS We all have our own story to tell, the only question is…is it worth telling? The students in Woodrow Wilson Highschool under the class of Mrs. Gruwell were delinquents. They were part of gangs of every kind black, Latin and Cambodians. They were racist. They beat up people who aren’t in their gangs and they protect their own even if it isn’t worth protecting. My first conception of delinquents were that they will never change, they were born to be like that and nothing and no one can change them, but after watching the movie my whole idea of these people changed. The thing is, this people aren’t as useless and worthless as I thought, they can give and be so much more than what they were before. They are actually willing to learn but they didn’t know that at first. They only need a person that can show them they aren’t trash and they deserve what other people are receiving. They deserve to be treated equally. The line that caught my attention the most is “ Everyday I worry when will I be free.” We are all in prisoned in one way or another. Trap in our own world full of cruelty and despair, wondering when will we be set free. But what we don’t see is that we aren’t alone, all of the people in the world are experiencing what we are experiencing. All people no matter what race have something in common. The teens didn’t get that at first, they thought their world and the life they’re trying so...
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...In the book, The Freedom Writers Diary, some things were not added into the movie. They changed the perspective, so instead of the students telling the story and the teacher secondary, like in the book, the teacher (Ms. Gruwell) tells the story, and the students are secondary. Also, the entries are worse and more horrifying than in the movie, like abuse, drugs, peer pressure, illness, and violence. I think that these changes, in the book version to the movie version, were to have a 3rd person point of view story of the kids, and not a 1st person point of view like in the book. When this story is in 3rd person point of view, we learn the struggle for Ms. Gruwell and the hardships on the students. In the movie, the screenplay writers added in a side story about Erin Gruwell and her husband. I believe that they did this because while the students are out on the streets with their gangs or friends getting in trouble or helping themselves getting better, we want to see how Ms. Gruwell is reacting to the students and what her family thinks of them. It shows what she thinks, wants, plans, and does to help the students and how passionate and caring she is aslo. After seeing the movie, some characters were like how I pictured them from the book, and others were way off. Eva was sort of how I pictured her, but not all of her. Her attitude, her hair, and what she wore is what I pictured of her, but she doesn’t seem like a “gangster”. I also pictured Marcus to look poorer...
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...PRACTICAL COMPETENCE COMMON ASSESSMENT #2 EDCI 5790 Advanced Instructional Strategies Jillian Dietchman In the movie Freedom Writers, Erin Gruwell is challenged with the task of teaching at-risk students and inspiring them to learn tolerance as well as apply themselves. Ms. Gruwell recognizes and applies principles and strategies for communicating effectively in varied practice and learning contexts. During this movie, Ms. Gruwell made learning meaningful and relevant to her students by appreciating their diversity and finding ways to connect their backgrounds to ideas they related to. She encouraged her students and helped them to self-direct their learning. Ms. Gruwell considered where students were coming from, what their lives were...
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...Freedom Writers: A Message of Hope According to Joseph Campbell, a scholar of mythology states that, a hero is one who hero gives his or her life to something bigger than him or herself, to some higher end not to mention also the hero undergoes trials and tests to see if he or she has the courage, the knowledge and the capacity to survive. To explain what this means I will use the protagonist Erin Gruwell (starring Hilary Swank), in the 2007 drama film, Freedom Writers, directed and written by Richard LaGravenese, It is based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell (teacher by profession) who wrote the story based on Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Long Beach, California. She started her teaching career as would any teacher; by doing a lesson plan. However her mistake was not taking the time to fully understand the type of students in her class room. Most of her students think the new teacher is “odd” because she does not believe what everyone else seems to know about these classes; they can read and they can write, and Ms. Gruwell expects them to do both. Everyone else seems to think they are stupid and beyond hope. They think this new teacher is “too young and too white to be working here,” and most of the kids in class predict she will leave after a day; one student gives her a month. The class is out of control, and there are more students than desks. The entire school is divided into groups ranging from “Beverly Hills” and “Da Ghetto” to “China Town”...
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...Freedom Writers Diary Review The movie “Freedom Writers” is a true story about a white teacher trying to make a difference in a room crammed with black, Latino and Asian high school freshmen. It is defiantly a challenge, especially for a first time teacher. Hillary Swank is the main actress and she plays Erin Gruwell, a 23-year-old teacher in 1994 assigned to teach freshman and softmore English at Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif. By the time Erin steps into her classroom, two years after the riots for integration, the school had changed greatly. This film portrays teachers in two ways, one way is the set in their way teacher and the other is willing to do whatever they can to make students succeed. In the beginning of the movie Mrs. Gruwell said “God by the time you’re defending a kid in a court room the battle is already lost, I think the real fighting should happen here in the class rooms.” In her statement she is foreshadowing two things, one is the real fights that happen in her class, and the other is what she does to help these students succeed. She later said “I know I have a lot to learn as a teacher but I’m a really good student….and I really want to be here!” This is a great statement by her and proves she could be an excellent teacher. Threw out the movie she did learn a lot, and applied what she learned. Mrs. Gruwell had a rough start. The kids wouldn’t respect her, they were fighting in the room, and there were gang problems brought into her class. At...
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