Straight from the front line of urban America, the inspiring story of one fiercely determined teacher and her remarkable students.As an idealistic twentythreeyearold English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of unteachable, atrisk students. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaustonly to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlatas Diary: A Childs Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a lifechanging, eyeopening, spiritraising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the Freedom Writers in homage to the civil rights activists The Freedom Riders. With funds raised by a Readathon for Tolerance, they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwells students were the real heroes. Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognitionappearances on Prime Time Live and All Things Considered, coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Rileyand educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college. With powerful entries from the students own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students. Erin Gruwell is now a visiting professor at California State University, Long Beach, where some of her students are Freedom Writers. The authors proceeds from th
