A Must for Anyone Working With Teens

books:

	• The Freedom Writers Diary (Movie Tie-in Edition): How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change ... The Freedom Writers, Erin Gruwell Broadway, 2006 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 173 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Love changes things

This is an awesome book. I think that it really shows how love can truly change a person. These children had all experienced so much heartache and devastation. I really admire Mrs. Gruewell for her dedication and love she showed the teens. Her willingness to not give up enabled these children to shake loose the shackles of their past and became successful. I believe everyone should truly read this book. It gives people a better look at the lives of today's teens, especially the lives of those from "the hood". It also lets people know that they do have a chance to succeed and that they can overcome any obstacle placed in front of them no matter where they may be from.

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Starts out fuzzy but wins you over

This is one of those inspiring teacher books. And like most of these inspiring teacher books it's a little heavy on the moralizing and light on the actual hard work involved. The great teachers are like the great writers, painters and athletes because they have so much natural talent that they can't really explain how they do most of what they do. There's a lot of hard work but there's also natural ability.

And this one has a distinction of being the story of a teacher who is an unrepetant liberal. Most of these hardcore inspiring teacher books seem to have a rightwing bias in which the teacher is a Joe Clark like crazy DISCIPLINARIAN who makes them knuckle under like it's a boot camp before they can learn. She's more the kind of teacher that becomes an example of what not to do when teaching. As in the story of "that Americorp volunteer who stupidly gave his address to his students and two of them tried to rob him and killed him."

But there's a terrific earnestness going through this book that trumps one's natural cynicism. Erin Gruwell could be an idealist because she was new and she was also very stubborn in her idealism. And the fact of the matter is that she succeeds because she did respect her students and she cared about their welfare. Eventually she wore them down.

But the main thing that makes this book decent is that it's about the students. Yes, there is some definite editing in the book. The first editing process is choosing what to put in and what to keep out. The diary entries are put up against each other in order to tell a story. Obviously the early entries are a little too polished to be believable as 9th grade journal entries, but Jim Carroll edited The Basketball Diaries and that didn't make them any less "authentic". They were just polished up before publication.

The main point of the diaries is that there are a lot of intelligent articulate people in crappy situations who are marginalized by their situations. Some can overcome their social limitations but most can't - not on their own at least. To expand on that theme, these writers overcame their situations because they had someone who believed in them and respected them. Everyone needs that; but for some it's a very rare commodity.

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A Must for Anyone Working With Teens

As a retired teacher and social worker, who worked with at-risk preschoolers I found this book very moving. As I read the diary entries I could picture the diarists as children that I worked with who had grown to teenagers and had had no one to keep them following the path they started as a preschooler. I was moved by the changes these teens made after becoming a member of the Freedom Writers and by just the simple fact that they were still alive despite their family lives, their neighborhoods, drugs,alcohol,poverty and the lack of inspiration and encouragement offered by so many of their teachers throughout their school years. How different so many at-risk children's of United States lives would be if the Ms. Gruwells of the world was the norm for teachers instead of the exception! I remember being a first time teacher. I thought I had done a good job. Now I wish that I had done more with those children who needed more than a day at school but rather a "family-like" figure who would listen, challenge, inspire and find ways to really make a difference in their lives.

I really like how these teens looked outside themselves and could see the similarity between the pain and intolerance they faced and that of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovie. To have such global insight at such a young age is remarkable.

I wish that the author of each entry could have some sort of identification so the reader could have followed the growth of the teen.....or maybe each entry was written by a separate teen?! [Although I think that several were written by the same person as the story line of some entries seemed to follow one person's life]. At times the comments of these teens were "So self-absorbed and teen-like". With the lives they were living what a joy it was to see that a little candle of just being a teenager was able to thrive.

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Writing can change lives

Do you think you could ever be the teacher of a handful of students that don't know what the Holocaust is, but have been shot at, at least once? Read The Freedom Writers Diary to learn about the hard and challenging life these teens went through and how they resisted any kind of instruction. One teacher, Mrs. Gruwell, tries to change all that. The Freedom Writers Diary, taking place from 1994 to 1998, is all diary entries from the real students at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. Mrs. Gruwell, the brave teacher who taught these students everything they know, worked hard to change the reputations of the kids and the way they think about themselves.

In the beginning of the story, you can tell by the entries that the teens in the class don't think very much of themselves and don't respect Mrs. Gruwell and the way she teaches. The students think she's just another teacher who thinks she knows what it's like to grow up in the ghetto but really has no idea. They think she doesn't care about them. By the end of the book, you can tell Mrs. Gruwell really does care for the class and everyone in it by what the students are writing. You wish you were there, witnessing the improvements every single teen made as they change their lives, the lives around them, and the world.

This book, filled with real entries, is hard to put down. You want to know what every teen's perspective on a given situation is. Whenever something intense happens, which is often, being in a big ghetto in California, the teens react in different ways. You can experience through what they write, how the girls and boys change their outlook on life and everyone around them.

Anyone who likes to read about the real world and the ups and downs of life will love this book. This book is different, in that it's real entries from real teens, working to better themselves and their reputations. This is the real deal.

Natalie

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Shocked by the teenage violence she witnessed during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Erin Gruwell became a teacher at a high school rampant with hostility and racial intolerance. For many of these students?whose ranks included substance abusers, gang members, the homeless, and victims of abuse?Gruwell was the first person to treat them with dignity, to believe in their potential and help them see it themselves. Soon, their loyalty towards their teacher and burning enthusiasm to help end violence and intolerance became a force of its own. Inspired by reading The Diary of Anne Frank and meeting Zlata Filipovic (the eleven-year old girl who wrote of her life in Sarajevo during the civil war), the students began a joint diary of their inner-city upbringings. Told through anonymous entries to protect their identities and allow for complete candor, The Freedom Writers Diary is filled with astounding vignettes from 150 students who, like civil rights activist Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders, heard society tell them where to go?and refused to listen.

Proceeds from this book benefit the Freedom Writers Foundation, an organization set up to provide scholarships for underprivieged youth and to train teachers

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