(Spoilers)Freedom Writers-Based on a True Story

[Ivy]

Summary: The film opens with footage of the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and introduces Eva, a Latina whose father was wrongly arrested for supposed retaliation to a drive-by shooting. She is initiated in a gang, and only goes to Wilson High School because her choice was to either go to boot camp or go to school. The Long Beach high school and its area are the place of a gang war, where hatred and racism abound. Meanwhile, naive first-time teacher Erin Gruwell gets a job teaching freshman English at Wilson High School. Her first day at school is a shock to her, as she sees a fight almost break out in her classroom and a full scale gang battle at the school. Her students do not obey her and continuously talk back to her. One night, Eva and a Cambodian refugee, Sindy, find themselves in the same convenience store. Another student, Grant Rice, is frustrated at losing an arcade game and demands a refund from the owner. When he storms out, Eva's boyfriend attempts a driveby shooting on him, accidentally killing Sindy's boyfriend. As Eva is a witness, she must testify at court; she intends to protect her own kind in her testimony. At school, Gruwell intercepts a racist drawing of one of her students, and uses it to teach them about the Holocaust. She gradually begins to earn their trust, and buys them composition books to record a diary, in which they talk about their experiences of being abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted. Determined to reform her students, she takes two part-time jobs to pay for more books and spends more time at school, to the disappointment of her husband. Her students start to behave with respect and learn more, and a transformation is especially visible in one of her students, Marcus. She invites several Holocaust survivors to talk with her class about their experiences, and takes them on a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Meanwhile, her unorthodox teaching methods are scorned by her colleagues and department chair Margaret Campbell. The next year comes, and Gruwell teaches her class again for sophomore year. In class, when reading The Diary of a Young Girl, they decide to invite Miep Gies over to talk to them. After fundraising the money to send her over, she tells them her experiences hiding Anne Frank. When Marcus tells her that she is his hero, she denies it, claiming she was merely doing the right thing. Her denial causes Eva to rethink lying during her testimony. When she testifies, she finally breaks down and tells the truth. Meanwhile, Gruwell gives her students a project to write their diary in the form of a book. She compiles the projects into a book and names it The Freedom Writers Diary. Her husband divorces her and Margaret tells her she cannot teach her kids for their junior year. She fights this decision, eventually convincing the superintendent to allow her to teach her kids' junior and senior year. The film ends with a note that Gruwell successfully brought many of her students to graduation and college.

Review: If every school had a teacher like Gruwell, than I think the School Boards/System would be suprised at how much harder struggling students will strive to make a difference in their life. I know so many people who dropped out of highschool, got knocked up, or engadged in deep criminal activity just because they thought they weren't smart enough for school or because nobody in their family graduated or "live the good life", so why should they? I know at one point in time, I was seriously considering dropping out of school, I hated it, I made straight A's, was on the teacher's "good" list, but I never had any true friends, everyone just used me for my intellect. Then I met a "Student Teacher" who was trying to work with the mentally challenged kids that also attended my Horticulture class. She was one of the two coolest teachers that ever existed. She would get you out of your other classes, she knew the latest trends and music, and she even admitted to growing weed in her closet in her bedroom at home. Now where else could you find a teach like that? And when I went on to Senior Year, I told her never to lose her character and mold into the crowd that the other teachers have created with rules and standards. I told her if you can make learning easier, funner, and actually give us a day off every now and again, then you'd have a lot of teens wanting to sign up for your class...