Imagine getting a job in an inner city school where violence is as common as math class. What would you do in this situation? How do you teach kids that seem to not want to learn? How do you teach kids English when they have things such as poverty, sexual abuse, pregnancy, rape, and drugs on their minds? How can you get these kids to express their feelings while still teaching what is in your curriculum? The answer: writing. But does it really work? Does it work in the way that the movie “Freedom Writers” portrays it? Does it work as well as Christensen describes it in her book
Reading, Writing, and Rising Up? I think it could. It is all up to the teacher. I found an article about a teacher who made it work.
When I began teaching, in walked in all these students who’d been in the riots, who’d been living in a town that saw 126 murders that summer — I was facing a class that thought their own futures were either in jail or six feet under, that thought ‘It’s only a matter of time before I become a statistic.
Instead of submitting to other teachers’ warnings and giving up on his new class of uninviting faces, Erin Gruwell took it upon herself to reach out to the seemingly “unreachable” students.
She first found a way to relate English to her students. She had to find some kind of a connection that would tap into all their hate, anger and hostility. She decided to make her students read The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank was someone these kids could relate to because these students faced many of the same problems that Anne Frank did. Gruwell then gave her students a notebook to keep a journal.
What they realized as they were writing was that they weren’t the only ones who had experienced these things. They weren’t the only ones who were scared or angry.
The kids wrote about rape, jail, abuse, gangs, and drugs. The students were also allowed to write anonymously giving the kids who are too scared to speak up a voice. This story actually inspired the movie “Freedom Writers.” It is not fiction. It is real life.
These kids finally got a chance to talk about issues that really mattered to them in a safe environment. Where else could these kids that opportunity? These journals helped to empower these students. They finally had an outlet to express their anger and sort their feelings. Through their writing they saw that they do belong in the academic world. Their journals gave them a way in. Imagine if students read their pieces aloud and developed a writing community. These kids could have security and safety that they never felt before. They could also have friends and allies in the outside world.
One student in Gruwell’s class came in wearing an ankle monitor and left Gruwell’s class with a college scholarship. The student, Maria Reyes states:
Make no mistake, Erin Gruwell didn’t save my life. I did. She gave me the gift of thinking it was possible, but I did it.
That is what school is all about isn’t it; giving students the tools to succeed in life? As teacher we just need to figure out what these tools are. It is going to be different from school to school and class to class. No matter where you go; however, students will need a safe place to talk and sort through their feelings, whether is rape and gangs or lawsuits and suburbia scandal. A writing class can be that place.
Sylvestri, Amy. “Freedom Writers Inspire Residents of Juvenille Hall.” The San Leandro Times. EbPublishing. 11 February 2007.
