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 3 Summary

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Sophomore Year: Fall 1995

Even as a student teacher, Ms. Gruwell was the target of jealous, envious teachers in her building; things do not improve now that she is a full-time staff member at Wilson High. Some call her a “hotshot” and do and say cruel things to her. It gets bad enough that she accepts a teaching position at another school, and she tells her principal she is leaving because “all” her colleagues are “out to get” her. But he reminds her that she does have some support in the building. One important thing Erin Gruwell has tried to teach her students is not to let the actions of a few determine how one feels about an entire group, and now she is doing just that. Ms. Gruwell decides to stay.

This year she will have the majority of her students from last year plus a new group of at-risk freshmen. She has ordered new books for the year, including Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo. She is most excited about the latter, for it is current and written about a war which is similar to the street wars her students live through every day. Soldiers in Zlata’s war in Bosnia made black marks on each person: a “C” for Croats, an “M” for Muslims, and more. Her students are marked by their natural colors as Asian, Latino, and Black. She is hopeful her students will be surprised at how much “life mirrors art.”

The school year starts differently for each student. One wakes up sad because she is no longer living in her own home after she and her mother were evicted. Though she is living with a friend of her pastor’s, she still feels homeless and without hope. But when she walks into her first class of the day, Ms. Gruwell’s English class, her problems fade and she feels at home. Another student is unable to be there on the first day of school because he is sick and waiting for a lung transplant. He is disappointed, because school is one of the only things he loves.

One student enters the classroom and is immediately afraid. He has never had Ms. Gruwell as a teacher. All the desks are pressed up against the wall, and everyone else seems to know one another. This student hopes to remain anonymous and not have to speak in front of the class, one of his worst fears. This teacher calls on people and talks with them, and he wishes Ms. Gruwell would be like the other teachers and just “talk monotonously” the entire period. He wishes she were a “boring” teacher like the others.

After having been in an accelerated academic program in two schools, a female student is dismayed and discouraged by how much pressure is being placed on her and how little real learning is happening. When a friend tells her about Ms. G and her classes, she wants to join the class; Ms. Gruwell makes it happen.

Students continue to be harassed and discriminated against by their peers and even teachers, but they are able to persevere because of the lessons Ms. G teaches them. Today she gives each student the four books she has chosen and tells them they are all going to have an opportunity to change. She calls it a “Read-a-thon for Tolerance.” Most of her students have been condemned by others, often even those they love, to a certain fate. Now they will have a chance to prove everyone wrong.

Another student, intricately connected to a gang, understands he is going to have to lie to protect his fellow gang member, Paco. It does not matter that Paco killed a man or that someone else will be blamed for the murder; this student has been taught to protect the family at all costs. As he sits on the witness stand, looking at his gang family and the family of the wrongly accused man, this student knows he must change the way things have always been. He must tell the truth, and he does. It is time for a change.

Another student is a “closet drinker” and knows it is slowly killing her. She wonders how she will ever achieve anything in life if she cannot begin a day without drinking. None of this particularly bothers her until her class begins reading about people who changed and wanted to make a difference in their worlds. Anne Frank was never free, but she made a difference. Now this student wonders if she will ever be free.

One female student has a lot in common with Anne and Zlata in that they all keep diaries. Anne and Zlata have loving fathers, though, but hers is a “dictator” who beats her. Like Anne and Zlata, she decides to be strong and wait for her war to end.

Other students connect with Zlata, a girl who lost her “childhood innocence” as the war in Sarajevo raged. Like this young girl who lives halfway around the world, they have been abused and molested; it makes them angry to know “history is indeed repeating itself.” A student who joined the class late in the semester does not understand all the class discussions until he gets a copy of the book and reads it. Now he understands that, just like the young people in Zlata’s world, he and his peers are in a war, “an undeclared war, waged on innocent kids just trying to grow up.” Society no longer cares about young people, though it is the young people who are its future.

Ms. G assigns them the task of writing Zlata an invitation in the form of personal letters to come to Long Beach to speak to them. The students are not sure if she actually intends to send them, but it becomes clear that she does. There are questions to answer, such as how to find the money to fly her here, but the letters will be sent.

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