However Ms Gruwell went beyond her comfort zone to provide students with resources. She worked tirelessly to fund for textbooks for her students.The rest of the administration had given up on these kids, withholding supplies and keeping expectations low. Her first job was selling lingerie in a Department Store while her second job was a hotel concierge in Marriot Hotel. Another important characteristic demonstrated by Ms Gruwell is her determination to help students succeed.Īn example of this is when she decided to work two part time jobs. Her constant energy and enthusiasm inspired her students and the viewers to strive for excellence and take advantage of the opportunities presented. Also, it helped me to understand the realm of problems and differences this community in Long Beach was experiencing.Īll the above techniques have helped me understand that despite all the problem there were in the school, Ms Gruwell tried to remain as enthusiastic towards the students.Although the class was difficult to teach she did not give up. The long shots helped me to understand the struggles and hardships that each of the students were facing in their communities. In an integrated school in California, all minority groups were represented. The close-up focused angles on Erin Gruwell brought out this realization at many key points in the film.Įxtreme long shots of the group of students helped us understand the diversity and difference the classroom was experiencing. An example of this shot was the smile on Ms Gruwell’s face fading away and she looked very miserable. Then, the shot cuts away from the main scene to show the reaction of Ms Gruwell.
An example of the camera work was the mid-shot of Ms Gruwell’s waist up which showed how pleased she was with the achievement of the students when she looked at the trophy cabinet.However, her enthusiasm quickly diminished when she witnessed the students talking to each other and that the class was divided into racial groups as soon as they entered the classroom. The camera was always close to Ms Gruwell and it followed her right throughout the initial stages in the school. This film is a superior entry in a long history of teaching brought to its ideal form in film.An example of the tracking shot is on her first day of teaching. For those of us who still toil in the fields of education, Freedom Writers reminds us why we love a profession that gives us a chance to save souls in the only way we can certify outside the uncertain faith of religion. Surely there are gifted teens who could do the job! Overall, however, the film rings true about the magic a dedicated teacher can do with rebellious but malleable teens. Most of all I object to those actors as students: They are way too old to be playing 14 and 15 year olds. Admittedly, her slacker husband, Scott (Patrick Dempsey), doesn't deserve such a gifted wife, and her crusty dad, Steve (a monumentally weathered Scott Glenn), has some stereotypical responses to his daughter's choices. Gruwell sacrifices, as cases of true love sometimes require, her personal freedom and loses her marriage for the higher good of the young people she teaches.
As in Charlotte's Web, both ingredients are potent reformers of the disaffected.
Seeing the photo of the real Gruwell with her students as the end credits roll, I can understand cynics saying this is typical Hollywoodno teacher can look like Hillary Swank! But rising above the petty carping that includes skepticism about transformation of unruly kids into real students within a year, I have to admit it happened because of the transforming power of love and words. The diaries her students wrote inspired students around the country to do the same. But because it is based on a true story of at-risk students attending Woodrow Wilson High in Long Beach, a voluntarily integrated school, I have to avoid accusing it of being derivative and offer that it relates the essential truth about education: Most students have a voice if a teacher can find it most students can thrive when a teacher creates a sense of family amid chaos, as Emily Gruwell did in the early '90's of Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. The teacher is the kingpin of the educational situation." Sidney Hook, Education for Modern Man It would be easy to criticize Freedom Writers as just another cliché-infested classroom redemption story, more Blackboard Jungle than History Boys. "Everyone who remembers his own educational experience remembers teachers, not methods and techniques.
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