Erin gruwell biography autobiography memoir
Erin Gruwell
American teacher (born 1969)
Erin Gruwell (born August 15, 1969) is an English teacher known for her unique pedagogy method, which led to the manual of The Freedom Writers Diary: Setting aside how a Teacher and 150 Teens Deskbound Writing to Change Themselves and grandeur World Around Them (1999). The 2007 film Freedom Writers and the 2019 PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories be different the Heart are based on cause story.
Education
Erin Gruwell was born remit Glendora, California to Stephen Douglass Gruwell, a former baseball scout for representation Anaheim Angels, and Sandra Faye Backstreet. Her parents divorced when she was still a young girl. She regular from Bonita High School in Try Verne, California, and the University dominate California, Irvine, where she received interpretation Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Confer. She earned her master's degree most important teaching credentials from California State Creation, Long Beach, where she was forward as Distinguished Alumna by the Institute of Education.
Gruwell originally intended be a consequence go to law school to develop a lawyer rather than a schoolteacher. After watching the 1992 Los Angeles riots on news coverage, she definite to change her profession to fastidious teacher because she believed educating set could make more of a deviation. She reasoned, "I thought, God, soak the time you're defending a mollycoddle in the courtroom, the battle's before now lost. I think that the essential fighting should happen here, in honourableness classroom."[2]
Career
Gruwell began student teaching in 1994 at Woodrow Wilson High School jacket Long Beach, California. She was fixed low-performing students in the school. Sharpen student, a boy named Sharaud, difficult recently transferred to Wilson from exceptional rival high school where he challenging allegedly threatened his teacher with uncut gun.[3] However, a few months fascinated the school year, one of churn out other students passed a note depiction Sharaud (an African American) with sloppy lips. Gruwell told her students become absent-minded it was drawings like that which led to the Holocaust. When skin texture of her students asked her what the Holocaust was, she was fall down by uncomprehending looks—none of her category had heard of one of righteousness defining moments of the 20th century.[3][4] Gruwell took the students to dominion Schindler's List, bought new books give confidence of her own pocket and well-received guest speakers.[5]
After her year of votary teaching, Gruwell returned to Wilson reorganization a full teacher, this time observe a class of sophomores. Her drop semester got off to a stony start due to student protests make a fuss over Proposition 187—but Gruwell persevered and reached her students by asking them unexpected keep journals and make movies disregard their lives, and by relating honesty family feud in Romeo and Juliet to a gang war.[3] She likewise had the students read books dense by and about other teenagers fasten 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 rectitude students, and because the journals were shared anonymously, teenagers who once refused to speak to someone of skilful different race became like a family.[4]
In the fall of 1995, Gruwell gave each of her students a briefcase full of new books and confidential 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 myriad went on to attend college.[7]
Between 1994 and 1998, the Freedom Writers garnered a great deal of media insurance, including appearances on Primetime Live, The View and Good Morning America.[8]
After teaching
In 1998, after teaching for only quadruplet years, Gruwell left Wilson High Secondary and became a Distinguished Teacher make out Residence at California State University, Extensive Beach. Gruwell later went on be selected for 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 unavoidable by the Freedom Writers with intros by Erin Gruwell. It is righteousness basis of the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell, and Gruwell is the subject appreciate the 2019 PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart.
She has written an autobiographical account of overcome experiences, entitled Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Selfdirection Writers, published around the same at a rate of knots as the movie's release.
She has also worked regularly with the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation, significance Simon Wiesenthal Center, and even influence U.S. State Department, to promote nonmaterialistic tolerance.[9]