young boy of color sitting at a desk with an open notebook on it

The Freedom Writers Diary

by Erin Gruwell

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Section 1 Summary

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Freshman Year: Fall 1994

Today is the first day of the first year of Erin Gruwell’s teaching career. Her classroom is in Wilson High School in Long Beach City, and it is nothing like the gated community where she was raised. She did her student teaching here last year, and the racial tensions did not take long to surface. When students circulate a cruel caricature of a Black student’s lips, Ms. Gruwell (Ms. G, to her students) is appalled and tells them this is the kind of propaganda the Nazis used during the Holocaust. After a few moments of silence, someone finally asks what the Holocaust was. Taken aback, the teacher asks how many students in the class have been shot at, and nearly every hand is raised. That is the moment when she changes her entire curriculum to the study of tolerance. She uses new books, goes on field trips, and invites guest speakers—all of which requires money the school district does not have. To fund her ideas, Ms. Gruwell has to get two night jobs.

The first class field trip, to see Schindler’s List in a predominantly white neighborhood, is a disaster; the outrageously prejudiced reaction is written about in the newspaper, and Ms. G receives death threats. A University of California-Irvine professor sees the article and invites the class to a seminar with the author of Schindler’s List; in turn, he is so impressed that he arranges a meeting for them with Steven Spielberg. The head of the English department chides her, however, for making her colleagues look bad since her underachieving students are beginning to achieve. When she becomes a full-time teacher, she is demoted to having four sections of “at-risk” students.

Most of her students think the new teacher is “odd” because she does not believe what everyone else seems to know about these classes; they can read and they can write, and Ms. G expects them to do both. Everyone else seems to think they are stupid and beyond hope. They think this new teacher is “too young and too white to be working here,” and most of the kids in class predict she will leave after a day; one student gives her a month. The class is out of control, and there are more students than desks. The entire school is divided into groups ranging from “Beverly Hills” and “Da Ghetto” to “China Town” and “Run to the Border.” The Distinguished Scholars are in class across the hall, and the only white student in this class believes he should be across the hall.

School is like the city and the city is like prison, which is divided solely by race. How a person looks is who a person is, and war has been declared in school as it has in prison. The fighting is for money, power, and territory; an attack today will be retaliated against tomorrow. One student loses a friend in a grocery store killing, and once he dies it is if he never lived. He had a family and friends and a future, and now he is gone because he was in “the wrong place at the wrong time.” The next day, the student straps on a gun which he found in the alley near his home—and hopes it does not accidentally go off as he gets on the bus. At school, only every fifteenth student is searched, so he counts before entering. All day he is silent, not doing his work or speaking a word. He is sure he will see his friend again if he just waits, and he knows he will lose more friends in this “undeclared war.” Society sees them only as statistics.

Another student is a Kappa Zeta sorority member, but getting there was not easy. Most members are rich, white scholars, so even being invited to pledge was an honor. The process was humiliating, and every girl did not finish the process. The humiliation ranged from sexual acts with senior boys to rotten food dumped over heads to wearing baseball caps with slut painted on them. Part of the way through the ordeal she wanted to quit, but she had already gone so far; and anyway, most of the other girls had to endure worse things than she did. If they had made her do anything too bad she would have quit. Now, she gets to attend the Kappa Zeta parties for free—and she gets to wear a Kappa Zeta sweatshirt. She does not drink, but she is sure she will learn.

A student walkout is planned because of Proposition 187, a law which would keep undocumented immigrants from all public programs, such as healthcare and public school. Some students are arrested in the walkout; others gather in the park across the street. One student’s mother is undocumented, and she is worried. Someone in class reminds everybody that “187” is the police code for murder, and this law will “murder the opportunities” for immigrants to succeed.

A student with dyslexia has always been able to read backward; however, he was often made fun of for reading poorly and slowly. Teachers have always assumed he was either “stupid” or “lazy,” and his fifth-grade teacher humiliated him in front of his entire class. He was ashamed and dejected until his mother sent him to a special school where he learned how to read and take notes. He is good at sports (he played first base and hit a grand slam in the Little League World Series) and learns from Ms. G that reading can be fun. Now he knows that, with hard work, he can be successful at both sports and school.

After having the class read Durango Street, Ms. G. has the class make a movie of the novel. The story is one many students in this school understand firsthand. It is a good film, and when some of the other English classes see it, they want to join the class. After they shoot their movie, Ms. G takes them to see the documentary Hoop Dreams. The characters in both the novel and the film persevere despite all those who think they will amount to nothing. They prove everyone wrong, and Ms. Gruwell’s students are starting to believe that if their passion is strong enough, they can do anything.

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Section 2 Summary

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