The Freedom Writers Diary - Erin Gruwell [47]
It’s been a hard time for everyone. We have to keep working in class, although we don’t know if we are going to be together next year or not. These teachers can’t break our chain, we are linked, not by our hands, but by our hearts and we will always be together. I’m scared, very scared. I hope everything works out.
Diary 53
Dear Diary,
School’s almost over, and I just found out that we get to have Ms. Gruwell next year! It’s great news for all of us. She fought hard to keep us together! I’ve been lucky to have her for two years. My mom says, “I’ve hit the lottery in education.” She’s the best teacher I’ve ever had. She truly cares about us and never judges us based on appearances. Now I get to be in her class my junior year!
I have a lot of friends who are in honors English and they’ve become quite interested in what my class has been doing lately! There have been questions about our field trips and the dinners we attended. After all the years my friends who had made me feel stupid, all are now interested in my class. After all, they used to call Ms. Gruwell’s class the “Ghetto Class” because of all the minorities. They have always made me feel like a dumb white boy because I’m not in their honors classes. Well, it looks like they’re the losers because they don’t know how great this class really is and how many friends I have made because of it. We have had many guest speakers and travel to museums and social functions. I view things much differently than my friends do because of my new experiences, but hey, they’re still my friends.
I told my friends that there was going to be room for a couple of more students in Ms. Gruwell’s class. I found out they had all signed a waiting list to get into her class the very next day! If my friends are accepted, I hope they will treat Ms. Gruwell and the other students with respect. If not, I’ll have to regulate because as far as I’m concerned, they’re the ones on probation in my “Ghetto Class”!
The Freedom Writers have a dream! On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., following a candlelight vigil honoring family and friends lost to violence.
Our fearless leader, Ms. G.
U.S. Secretary of Education Riley, speaking to us when we presented our manuscript in Washington, D.C.
Miep Gies, the courageous woman who sheltered Anne Frank and her family, signs copies of her book, Anne Frank Remembered, and Anne’s book, The Diary of a Young Girl.
With Miep.
A group of mothers we call “The Dream Team” surround Ms. G.
Another late night in Room 203 working on one of the computers donated by John Tu.
Dr. Carl Cohn, Superintendent of the Long Beach school district.
Connie Chung and the Freedom Writers prepare for the “Prime Time Live” taping.
Junior Year Fall 1996
Entry 5. Ms. Gruwell
Dear Diary,
I can’t believe that school starts tomorrow and I’m taxiing down a runway in France. Even though I’m bound to have jet lag in the morning, it’s worth it. Since I couldn’t take my students with me on my two-week trek, I wanted to bring parts of Europe back with me. So I collected books, museum brochures, and postcards from all the places we studied in class, like the Tower of London and Anne’s attic. I can’t wait to show them my wooden shoes from Holland, my Blarney Stone from Ireland and all the pictures.
With a twelve-hour flight ahead of me, I have plenty of time to reminisce about the summer. I’ll “rewind the movie in my mind,” as Zlata would say, and replay the summer from the beginning, pausing on some of the highlights.
The first day of summer seems so long ago. I didn’t really have a summer break in the conventional sense because I started teaching at a university. A professor at National University, whose son is in my class, invited me to me to teach a seminar on how to inspire teens to read. It was an emotional two hours. Halfway through the seminar, people started crying. And at the end, the dean of National University offered me a job.
So I taught two education