Freedom Writers Highlight the Power of Young People

For all the talk about the power of young people to change their lives, there's nothing like a real-life example, and that's just what attendees got when keynote speaker Erin Gruwell addressed The 16th Annual National Service-Learning Conference, on March 18, 2005, in Long Beach, Calif.

In 1994, Gruwell, a 23-year-old English teacher, started at Long Beach's Woodrow Wilson High School, where she was given the kids other teachers had given up on.

It wasn't easy to reach these kids, Gruwell told the audience. At first they wondered, "Who is this crazy woman from suburbia wearing polka dots and pearls, and what is she going to teach us?"

Gruwell felt like she was facing a stone wall, but eventually earned the students' trust, and got them to tell their own stories, "stories about being hungry, violence, and housing projects," she said.

Through these stories, she learned about the violent lives her students were living, and started bringing in books by teens in similarly difficult situations, including "Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo" by Zlata Filipovic and "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl."

"Soon they realized their lives were the same as Anne Frank's," Gruwell said. "They were discriminated against. Their backs were against the wall."

Inspired by stories they were reading of teens in similar conditions, the students began writing diary entries of their own, anonymously. They dubbed themselves The Freedom Writers, after the Freedom Riders of the civil rights movement, and set to work. As they wrote, and began to experience success in their English class, their grades in other subjects also began to improve.

"When I entered the class, we all knew that we were in the 'dumb class,'" said Tony Becerra, one of the Freedom Writers who spoke with Gruwell "Most teachers would say, 'If you don't want to learn, there are others who do. So, just be quiet.'"

The Freedom Writers became anything but quiet. They wrote Zlata Filipovic and Anne Frank's childhood friend Miep Gies, both of whom came in to speak with the group. They also traveled to Washington, D.C., and used the opportunity to meet with lawmakers and remind them what it means to be a teenager.

The Freedom Writers went on to land a publishing deal, and "The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them " not only became a book, but is also being made into a Miramax film with Becerra, currently a college film student, serving as a consultant on the set.

More importantly, 150 Freedom Writers, students who were supposed to fail, graduated from high school and have turned their lives around, most going on to college.