Erin Gruwell & Freedom Writers

Remember back when we were in school, how we wished to get great, inspirational teachers? We prayed that they did not only put their focus on squeezing every bit of input from textbooks into our brains, but also made the efforts to set our scope beyond that? Well, no disrespect to teachers, but the truth is such measure is not commonly found in them. To say that they are at fault would not do them any justice; after all, their job is merely to educate students, and by that we mean merely helping them to get good grades, and eventually finish school.

Enter Erin Gruwell, giving a whole new definition to the teaching profession. She is the pioneer, the lady responsible for bringing Freedom Writers together, a group of students from a high school in Long Beach, California. Now, this was during the time when the school had just been racially integrated, so you can pretty much imagine the hostile environment faced by students and teachers. Having just graduated from college when she stepped into the school ground as a teacher, naturally things did not come easy for her at first. Somehow she managed to develop some unusual teaching methods, in the process got to understand her students of mixed races better and more importantly brought them close together to a point unimaginable in such a tense environment. Later, these students who earlier were not even sure if they could survive the next day grew up to become successful men and women, all thanks to Erin Gruwell. Every twist of events is well-laid in the movie by the title Freedom Writers itself, so if you are interested in the entire cause brought forward by this teacher perhaps you might want to head down to a nearby store and look for the DVD.

There have been many other Hollywood movies that had been produced that tried to depict this racial confrontation when it was in its height. Some, like Remember the Titans and Glory Road, brought forth sports as the common trait. While that might appear to some as cliché, I would consider that they were pretty successful in getting the message across and attracting positive response from the audience. A classroom situation depicted in Freedom Writers however is a pretty unusual theme, and for this reason I found the scenes represented in the film as refreshing.

The best part here is that the story does not just end with the movie. Freedom Writers themselves are for real, and this movie in fact is based on their true life accounts. Furthermore, there is even a foundation established by these Freedom Writers, presided by Erin Gruwell herself that aims at reforming the education by encouraging teaching methods that was first developed by her.

I am not exactly sure whether I am impressed solely by the movie, or by the whole cause brought by Erin Gruwell and her Freedom Writers. However, one thing that I am certain of is that I am grateful that the world has a teacher like Erin Gruwell.