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The students at Wilson High School are used to navigating racial and ethnic divisions. The rivalry between black, Asian, and Latino gangs affect their everyday lives, constantly making them potential victims in a war where only external appearances and group loyalty matter. As a consequence, at school and in their neighborhood, students learn to remain within the confines of their own identity group. However, when Ms. Gruwell begins to teach her class about the historical consequences of ethnic violence around the world, focusing on the stories of Anne Frank in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and Zlata Filipović in contemporary war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina, her students are forced to confront the horrific consequences of ethnic hatred. Inspired by Anne and Zlata’s experiences, Ms. Gruwell’s students learn to see beyond the barriers of race and ethnicity, discovering that peace and tolerance are infinitely greater goals than remaining focused on people’s different identities. Ultimately, the Freedom Writers commit to focusing only on everyone’s inherent humanity, concluding that there is only one race that matters: the united human race.

The students at Wilson High School are immersed in the urban world of Long Beach, where racial tensions and a vicious gang war divide the population along ethnic and racial lines. As a result, one’s social identity and appearance determine one’s entire life, from one’s friend group to one’s chances of survival in the street. Erin Gruwell begins to teach in a historical context of racial tensions. Two years earlier, in 1992, officers in the Los Angeles Police Department were filmed brutally beating Rodney King, an unarmed black man, before arresting him. When the police officers were acquitted for this act, six days of violent rioting erupted in Los Angeles, protesting the long-standing discrimination and abuse that the African-American community has suffered from the police. This long stretch of rioting had a severe effect on increasing racial tensions in the area, and Ms. Gruwell notes that the tension could be felt in the school itself. Later events, such as California’s Proposition 187, meant to prohibit illegal immigrants from using various services in California (including health care and public education), only heightened the sense of discrimination and exclusion that many minority communities experienced at the time, in particular Asian and Latino immigrants.

Ethnic and racial communities were also in direct rivalry with each other, as African-American, Asian, and Latino gangs engaged in a ruthless war for power and territory. To remain safe, people generally stayed loyal to their own group, as one could be shot at for the mere fact of having the wrong skin color—regardless of whether or not one actually belonged to a rival gang. At Wilson High School, these divisions are strikingly visible. The school quad is divided according to color and ethnicity, as people mostly make friends with members of their own identity group.

This ethnic hatred and violence affects all students. Most of them have been shot at, have directly witnessed gang-related violence, and have seen their friends die over the course of the years due to gang rivalry. After Ms. Gruwell questions a student about the rivalry between the Latino and Asian gangs, trying to make that student realize that this war is just as senseless as that of the Capulets and Montagues in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the student comes to realize that Ms. Gruwell is probably right. Yet even though he cannot justify the gang’s divisions, he still abides by their logic: “[Ms. Gruwell] always tries to corner you into accepting that there’s another side, when there really isn’t. I don’t even remember how the whole thing got started, but it’s obvious that if you’re from one family, you need to be loyal and try to get some payback.”

Through Ms. Gruwell’s teaching, the students discover that racial and ethnic tensions have deep historical consequences in other places in the world. Reading the diaries of Anne Frank, who was killed in Nazi Germany for being a Jew, and of Zlata Filipović, a young girl caught in the contemporary Bosnian war, divided among nationalities and religions, allows the students to examine ethnic divisions from a distance. They come to realize that peace and tolerance are much more inspiring messages than ethnic hatred and rivalry.

When, as a student teacher, Erin Gruwell intercepts a racist caricature of an African-American boy in her class, she becomes furious and tells her students that such stereotyping is precisely what led to horrific events such as the Holocaust. She soon realizes that most of her students have never heard of the Holocaust. As a result, she decides to devote her teaching to the promotion of tolerance. When her students discover the stories of two fellow teenagers, Anne Frank and Zlata Filipović, they come to terms with the devastation that ethnic divisions can cause. During World War II, adolescent Anne Frank is forced to hide for years and is ultimately sent to a concentration camp, where she ultimately dies—all because of the mere fact that she is Jewish. In early-1990s Bosnia and Herzegovina, another young girl, Zlata, is forced to hide in a basement to escape the brutal ethnic war that is tearing her country apart. Ms. Gruwell’s students soon note similarities between their own lives and the senseless violence that these two young girls had to endure. Inspired by these young diarists’ messages of tolerance, the students become inspired to write their own diaries, chronicling their lives in a world where racial tensions and gang violence are rife.

It is when the students delve into a geographically closer past, that of the United States, that they find the inspiration to make a commitment against racial violence and injustice. They read about the Freedom Riders, a group of civil rights activists—seven black and six white—who rode a bus across the American South in the early 1960s to protest the segregation of public buses. In Alabama, the Freedom Riders were violently beaten by a mob of Ku Klux Klan members. When Ms. Gruwell’s students discover that these black and white activists were ready to sacrifice their lives to champion equal rights, they realize that they can use this episode in American history as inspiration in their own fight for diversity and tolerance. Making a pun with the original activists’ name, they decide to call themselves the “Freedom Writers.”

After long months of studying the historical consequences of racial hatred, the Freedom Riders conclude that dividing people according to their appearance or group identity is absurd and dangerous. They commit to the ideal of unity, based on the premise of recognizing everyone’s humanity. The students come to terms with the fact that separating people among racial or ethnic groups can generate injustice and harm. In Diary 33, a student recounts a time when she had to testify in court. After having seen her friend Paco kill another man, she is supposed to defend Paco and lie about his involvement in the murder, so as to defend her fellow Latino “people,” her “blood.” However, in court, she sees the despair in the eyes of the accused man’s mother—who is black—and realizes that this woman reminds her of her own Mexican mom. In this moment, she realizes that both sides of the conflict are affected by the same, senseless violence, and that protecting injustice in the name of her group identity will only tear more families apart. In a courageous move, she decides to tell the truth and accuse Paco of murder, therefore going against her presumed loyalty to Latinos in order to defend a greater ideal of justice. This decision demonstrates her commitment to recognizing everyone’s humanity and dignity, regardless of their race or identity.

However courageous and inspiring the Freedom Writers’ messages of diversity and tolerance might be, the young students often experience resistance from close-minded adults. When the Freedom Writers invite Zlata to come to the United States, she gives a speech at the Croatian Hall where she talks about her experience of ethnic hatred in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even though she is a direct survivor of severe ethnic violence, some adults still ask her what her ethnicity is: Serbian, Croatian, Muslim? The adults’ reaction demonstrates their resistance to conceiving of the world in a color- or ethnicity-blind way. Yet Zlata boldly answers: “I am a human being” and the Freedom Writers stand by her, confirming that people’s humanity—and not their nationality, religion, or skin color—should be the only thing that ever matters. In Diary 17, a Freedom Writer reiterates this conclusion in her own words: “As long as I know that I am a human being, I don’t need to worry about what other people say. In the end, we all are the same!”

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While Wilson High School assigns Ms. Gruwell a group of students that have already been labeled “unteachable” by the rest of the school staff, the new teacher soon discovers that her students are far from a hopeless cause. Instead, these adolescents are merely the reflection of the low expectations that adults have imposed on them all their life. To make her students feel more engaged in academic life, Ms. Gruwell adopts a teaching method in which the students can directly relate what they are learning to their own lives. Her goal is to make education more than a mere transfer of information, using education as a tool for her young students to grow as responsible, humane individuals. Her teaching methods reach their greatest achievement in the diary-writing exercise, where her students are able to develop a voice of their own. Through writing and sharing diary entries, the Freedom Writers discover the true meaning of education: to trust in one’s potential and become compassionate, honest human beings, ready to tackle the greatest problems in human life—and, crucially, pass on all the knowledge they have acquired.

As a young teacher, Ms. Gruwell is given the group of kids that no one else wants. Her students are called “at-risk,” “rejects,” and “basic” by most of the high school staff—including the students themselves. Through her humane approach toward the young men and women she teaches, Ms. Gruwell aims to show that these labels are both misleading and unfair. For Ms. Gruwell, much of what leads these students to lack ambition and academic drive is what they hear from other adults, who constantly put them down. “Although they’re a pain, they’re just kids. But adults created the system. The system separates them and then they’re stereotyped as ‘basic,’ but in reality, they’re anything but basic. […] It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you tell kids they’re stupid—directly or indirectly—sooner or later they start to believe it.”

Ms. Gruwell soon realizes that she is right in trusting in her students’ abilities. She discovers that her students’ intelligence is far greater than what standard tests of academic performance generally measure. “Even though their reading scores don’t indicate that they’re ‘smart’ in the conventional sense, it’s amazing how savvy they are. They’re a walking encyclopedia when it comes to pop culture, quoting the lines from their favorite movies verbatim or reciting every lyric from the latest rap CD.” She recognizes that the students’ capacities have been largely underestimated, as no one has truly tried to understand them on their own terms.

What students need, Ms. Gruwell concludes, is unwavering support. When, during a self-evaluation activity in class, a student writes down that he believes he deserves an “F,” Ms. Gruwell’s reaction is pure anger: she tells him that he is rejecting himself, as well as everyone who cares about him. Shaken by Ms. Gruwell’s speech, the student concludes: “What she showed me today is that a truly self-reliant person takes action, leaving nothing to chance and everything to themselves. She showed me that excuses will not bring about success and that adversity is not something you walk with, but something you leap over. The only obstacles are the ones you allow.” Ms. Gruwell aims her students with the trust she has in them, so that they might be moved by feelings of self-worth and learn to fight the low expectations that society has for them. As one student recounts: “Ms. Gruwell told me something that would change my life forever. She told me she believed in me. I have never heard those words from anyone . . . especially a teacher.”

In order to make her students feel personally involved in academic learning, Ms. Gruwell always relates schoolwork to real-life situations. Her vision of education involves not only aiming for good grades, but also establishing a connection between oneself and the outside world, so as to lead a healthy, compassionate life.  For Ms. Gruwell, becoming a good person and a good student starts with believing in oneself. A turning point in the students’ classroom experience takes place during the “Toast for Change.” In this activity, the students are all given a “clean slate.” They are told that, in this moment, they can forget about who they have been in the past past and, instead, decide for themselves who they want to be. After this activity, many students vow to change for the better and show distinct progress. When Ms. Gruwell discovers that one of her most recalcitrant students has already finished reading all the assigned books, she realizes that giving young people the opportunity to change can have a profound effect on their mind.

To make her students feel engaged with class work, Ms. Gruwell adjusts her lesson plans to the students’ reality. Instead of reading textbooks about World War II, they personally meet with two Holocaust survivors, Miep Gies and Renee Firestone, so that they might understand the human dimension of this war. Another time, Ms. Gruwell makes the students read Durango Street, a book about an African-American teenager involved in gang violence. She asks the students to make a movie about the book, impersonating its various characters, so that they might relate to its story on a personal level. Throughout her years with the Freedom Writers, hands-on activities and field trips are meant to give the students an emotional tie to what they are learning. This allows them to use school-acquired knowledge in their own life, using them as powerful the tools to fight their own challenges.

Ms. Gruwell’s teaching techniques find their deepest expression in the students’ diary writing, which allows them to relate what they have learned in the classroom to the most intimate details of their own lives.  While some students initially object to the idea of having to write about their personal lives, claiming that the pain they feel is too intimate and too strong, the exercise ultimately proves liberating, capable of bringing solace to those who most need it.

When students are asked to edit each other’s diary entries, with the objective of publishing a selection of them as a book, the true impact of what they have achieved comes to light. On various occasions, students are able to empathize with each other because they have lived through similar situations themselves. When a young boy reads about a girl’s abortion, he feels more connected to his girlfriend, who also had to undergo an abortion. When a young girl reads about a fellow student’s experience of sexual abuse in her family, her own memories of a similar episode come to light. By discovering each other in an anonymous and respectful way, the students learn about each other’s greatest challenges. This allows them to put their own experiences in perspective and find comfort in sharing their most intimate stories. Writing and reading other people’s stories becomes a healing moment of its own, making the Freedom Writers stronger individually and collectively, as they becomes more connected to their own selves and to the other members of the group.

The impact of these students’ stories extends well beyond the group of the Freedom Writers itself. As the class begins to receive attention from the media for the courageous activities they have engaged in, their stories leak beyond the classroom. Later, when they share some diary entries with Secretary of Education Richard Riley, they feel that they have made the rest of the world aware of their hardships and achievements. Throughout the course of the years, the Freedom Writers realize that sharing their personal stories can benefit not only themselves, but also others who are experiencing similar ordeals and who are grateful to know that they are not alone in their situation. After the Freedom Writers Diaries become published and read by people all around the world, they reaffirm their commitment to educating people about the realities they face. Their desire to make the world a better place extends beyond their high school life, as adult Freedom Writers remain active in fostering a community of learning, support, and self-worth through the Freedom Writers Foundation.

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The family life of Ms. Gruwell’s students impacts them well beyond the boundaries of their home. While some students benefit from strong parent support and feel encouraged to pursue their education, many others struggle with difficult family situations which affect their performance at school. Missing or uncaring parents, domestic abuse, and homelessness all leave a toll on students’ well-being, affecting their sense of self-confidence and their motivation to succeed academically. While Ms. Gruwell cannot directly solve the students’ problems at home, she succeeds in creating a classroom where all students feel included and loved. As the bonds between the Freedom Writers and their teacher grow, many students find in this group a substitute family, capable of providing them with the support, care, and motivation they so desperately need.

The family situation in which students find themselves plays a crucial role in their health, safety, and sense of self-worth. Positive and negative experiences at home impact their vision of success at school. In the Afterword, where some students recount what has happened to them since high school, the author of Diary 8 explains that his mom has been the most important stabilizing force in his life. As an adolescent, he abruptly left his home, in an act of anger and rebellion, but later repented and returned home, assuring his mother that he had changed for the better. Instead of turning him down, his mother took him in, thus saving him from the perils of homelessness. This served as a turning point in the young boy’s life, as he realized that the bond he shares with his mother is unbreakable, and that she will never give up on him. This motivated him to change and become a more responsible son, ready to behave well at home and at school.

Other, less fortunate students find themselves in situations where their family stifles their growth and undermines their self-confidence. Judging from the relatively poor attendance at a “Back to School Night” during Freshman year, Ms. Gruwell notes that some parents seem to have given up on their children’s education entirely. Throughout the years, many students’ diary entries chronicle their lives at home marked by neglect and various forms of abuse. Some have to deal with fathers who are either uncaring, imprisoned, or have abandoned them. Others are forced to witness the beatings that their mothers suffer at the hands of a boyfriend or husband. Others, finally, are sexually assaulted by family members who had previously seemed worthy of trust. The lack of strong role models leaves them unable to imagine what a successful, healthy life might look like. These experiences take a severe emotional toll on the adolescents, whose instability at home often translates into precarious academic performance.

Some students even find themselves without a stable home, and students in extreme situations of poverty and homelessness are often excluded from any kind of comfort, both at school and outside of school. These situations leave a deep mark in students’ psyches, often affecting them for the rest of their life. Many students find themselves without a place to call home. Some are evicted from their homes and forced to live on the floor of a stranger’s house or in the street. Others are separated from their siblings and placed in foster homes by social services. These students generally feel that their private lives are so torn apart that they have no stable place to call their own, where they might feel safe and cared for.

School life can heighten their sense of exclusion, as cruel teachers do not hesitate to humiliate their most vulnerable students. In the Afterword, one Freedom Writer recalls living in a mobile home at a gas station and not having enough money to eat anything but Vienna sausages and cheap bread. Instead of finding comfort at school, she feels judged and excluded. A teacher berates the student—who does not have regular access to a shower—by calling her “dirty” in front of the entire class and telling her that she should be able to buy soap. The pain of these experiences remains vivid as an adult, as the former high school student recounts that, even today, “[e]very time I tell my story, I reopen the wound and relive my childhood. What helps me persevere is […] when I look into the audience and recognize the familiar pain in someone’s face as he or she connects to my story.”

To help her students deal with life at school and outside of school, Ms. Gruwell aims for classroom 203 to become a space where students can feel safe and cared for. By encouraging them to share their personal experiences, she helps them reduce the pain and humiliation they might feel. Students with troubled lives at home come to realize that the Freedom Writers provide a family of their own, capable of bringing emotional and academic support to those who might need it.

Ms. Gruwell succeeds in making the Freedom Writers a self-sufficient, powerful support group. She encourages all students to cooperate with each other and, most importantly, to support each other’s various endeavors. When, during a field trip, a student who has always suffered from body-image issues takes part in a dancing circle, she finds that she is accepted and cheered on by her fellow Freedom Writers, none of whom judges her for her weight. When a Freedom Writer is elected Senior Class President, she basks in the support of the entire class. Around graduation time, when various Freedom Writers get admitted to the universities they wanted, they are cheered on by the rest of the class. In sum, throughout their time at school, the Freedom Writers constitute a support group where students can feel accepted, regardless of their identity, appearance, or background. It allows everyone to share their academic achievements as well as their deepest emotional problems and insecurities.

As a result, many students come to regard Ms. Gruwell’s class as a family, able to complement or replace what is missing from their actual lives outside of school. As one student concludes: “The Freedom Writers filled this huge hole I had by giving me a safe place where I always knew someone cared. […] Losing these people would be like losing a part of my family.”

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Violence and death are so present in many of Ms. Gruwell’s students’ lives that, when they read about Anne Frank and Zlata Filipović’s experiences in war-torn countries, many of them feel that they, too, are suffering from an undeclared war—one made of domestic abuse and gang violence, where death can strike at any moment. Through Ms. Gruwell’s teaching, though, students become empowered about their capacity to break the cycle of violence. Inspired by the ideal of self-reliance, they realize that transforming themselves can be a powerful tool to reduce the harm around them—as well as the harm they suffer within themselves. While learning to stand up to violence and injustice takes a lot of practice, the Freedom Writers commit to becoming responsible individuals, ready to take a stand against violence in the world.

For many of Ms. Gruwell’s students, death and violent are intrinsic aspects of their life. At school and in their neighborhood, they are confronted to a violence over which they seem to have no control. Ms. Gruwell discovers the pervasive environment of death that some of her students are immersed in: “When I asked one of my freshmen if he thought he’d graduate, he said. ‘Graduate? Hell, I don't even know if I’ll make it to my sixteenth birthday!’ To some of these kids, death seems more real than a diploma.”

The students soon discover that they are not the only ones in this situation. When they read Anne Frank and Zlata Filipović’s diaries, they become aware that what they experience on a daily basis can also be called an undeclared “war.” Their war happens in the streets, through the constant murders of innocent people, as well as at home. Recalling domestic violence in her home, one student explains: “Although not quite like the war Hitler started, the war in my house was also created by ignorance and stupidity. Like all wars, there is an enemy. There are innocent victims, destruction, senseless violence, displacement, and a winner and a loser.”

In Ms. Gruwell’s class, the students become empowered to think about breaking cycles of violence in their own, small ways. Learning to trust in their instincts about justice and proving that they are “self-reliant” become important goals. In practice, however, standing up to violence is often difficult to achieve on the first try, as such a courageous action requires not only conviction, but also practice. During a day full of racial tensions and fights at school, one of Ms. Gruwell’s students sees a young boy violently beaten by twenty other boys for being Hispanic. Fearful of being beaten up himself, the student finds himself incapable of doing anything to protect the boy. “If Ms. G finds out that I just stood by and did nothing, she’ll really be pissed at me. After all, I wasn’t being very ‘self-reliant.’ I just hope she doesn’t find out.” Even though Ms. Gruwell has not necessarily prepared her class for all the unpredictable, violent situations in life such as this one, this student’s fear that his teacher might find out about his inaction demonstrates the powerful sense of personal accountability that she has instilled in her students.

The students’ sense of accountability toward Ms. Gruwell, themselves, and the larger Freedom Writers group increasingly encourages them to reflect on the best behavior they could adopt in the face of adversity. One Freedom Writer, a senior member of a sorority, finds herself appalled at the cruel hazing that young freshmen have to endure. She feels guilty at letting abusive actions take place under her very eyes, while she is herself a member of this sorority. As a Freedom Writer, she feels that she should stand up to defend those who are being humiliated. In the end, while she does not act in the moment of hazing itself, she ultimately decides to leave the sorority, deciding that she will not stand by while other endure injustice and humiliation. The sense of belonging to a worthy cause—the Freedom Writers—gives her the strength and sense of responsibility necessary to act in the name of her ideals.

Therefore, while the students might not be able to eradicate all the violence around them, the Freedom Writers experience allows them to shift their attitude from utter hopelessness to the belief that impacting one’s own life can be sufficient to enact change. During freshman year, one of Ms. Gruwell’s students says, about gang violence: “so our reasons might be stupid, but it’s still going on, and who am I to try to change things?” His view that he, as an isolated individual, could never go against the violence he grew up in, expresses his frustration with the brutal reality he has always known, but also underestimates his own power to change both himself and his community. Indeed, while neither Ms. Gruwell nor her students succeeded in putting an end to gang violence and domestic abuse, they to become leaders in their life and in their community, transmitting the positive transformation they experienced. Ultimately, all Freedom Writers graduated from high school and many of them became successful role models in their community, able to inspire other young students to escape the whirlpool of violence they grew up in—using tolerance, self-trust, and education as the foundation for non-violence.