The Freedom Writers Diary - Erin Gruwell [90]
One of the teachers from Butler read an article about the Freedom Writers in the Los Angeles Times. The article was inspiring and many teachers throughout the country responded by inviting us to speak at their schools. They wanted their students to hear our real-life success story.
There we were in an auditorium in front of an audience of fifty kids. There were kids from every ethnic background; blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians. Usually Ms. Gruwell would accompany us, but today we were on our own. Today we were given the torch to carry our message of tolerance and education to these kids. To start off the assembly we presented a video documentary of the Freedom Writers in Washington, D.C. After the video we answered their questions about the trip and gave them the historical background of our name and foundation. Later on we played an icebreaker game. The kids were on one side of the room and we were on the other, and down the center was a white line that divided us. Each one of the Freedom Writers had to go down the line and read a sentence from a piece of paper. Some of the questions asked were, “Who’s wearing a green shirt?” or “Does anybody know what they want to do in the future?” If any of the questions applied to them, then they would have to stand on the white line. As we got toward the end there were some personal questions. We asked them, “Has anybody seen someone get shot before?” Almost everyone stepped on the white line. At that moment we decided to share some of our personal experiences with the kids.
One Freedom Writer told about his experience of being in a gang and living on the street. Another person shared his experience of quitting school and realizing that life isn’t a fantasy world. When one of the Freedom Writers talked about her friends who had been killed, a little girl in the corner started to cry. I tried to pull her aside to ask her what was wrong, but she started to cry more and more. She stayed in the room to tell her own story of how her friend had gotten killed. After that confession, more of the children started to tell their stories. Some of the stories were similar to what the Freedom Writers had experienced. We talked to the children more and asked them if this was how they wanted to live their lives. There was a simultaneous “No!” By the end of the day, all of the children were declaring that they would become “doctors, lawyers, and teachers!” but they also promised to come back to the community they lived in to fix the problems. We gave them hugs and words of encouragement to hold on to their dreams and goals and to always soar high.
It’s amazing. I remember when we got back from Washington, D.C., Ms. G said that kids will think of us as heroes and will want to become Freedom Writers, too. We laughed at Ms. G’s analogy, and did not take her seriously. We have come to learn not to doubt Ms. G.
Diary 108
Dear Diary,
I didn’t realize writing was so hard. It’s very tedious and overwhelming, but satisfying at the same time. The writing assignments I do for Ms. G’s class require draft after draft until everything is perfect. I can’t begin to imagine how hard Nancy Wride has it when she goes through everything over and over to finish a story. That’s what she does, she tries to make her work perfect for the Los Angeles Times.
Nancy Wride is a wonderful reporter who just wrote a story about us. It seems as though she really cares about our past and our future. She is a tiny little thing, but she’s all heart, and she is very thorough with her work. She makes sure what we say is reported accurately word for word in the newspaper.
When Nancy’s story