Gruwell’s students wrote about their everyday lives in their diaries, which make up much of the book. Under the name “Freedom Writers,” chosen in homage to the historical Freedom Riders civil rights activists who fought against segregation in the American South, Ms. Gruwell also created the Freedom Writers Foundation, a non-profit organization that aspires to share the Freedom Writers method with other educators.

She left high school teaching in 1998, the same year that her students graduated, and began to teach at California State University, Long Beach. Through her extraordinary dedication to her students, she transformed a class divided by ethnic tensions into a united group, passionate about history and about making the world a better place. Ultimately, she led her group of 150 “at risk” students to outstanding academic achievement. After intercepting a racist drawing in her class and discovering that many of her students had never heard of the Holocaust, she devoted her entire curriculum to teaching tolerance. In 1993, she began teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, a school known for its ethnic and racial diversity.

In an easy-to-use format with black-and-white illustrations, this teacher’s guide will become the essential go-to manual for teachers who want to make a difference in their pupils’ lives.Erin Gruwell decided to become a teacher after witnessing the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and deciding that she wanted to teach young people to react in different ways to anger and frustration. Here Gruwell goes in depth and shares her unconventional but highly successful educational strategies and techniques (all 150 of her students, who had been deemed “unteachable,” graduated from Wilson High School in Long Beach, California): from her very successful “toast for change” (an exercise in which Gruwell exhorted her students to leave the past behind and start fresh) to writing exercises that focus on the importance of journal writing, vocabulary, and more. In response to thousands of letters and e-mails from teachers across the country who learned about Erin Gruwell and her amazing students in The Freedom Writers Diary and the hit movie Freedom Writers, Gruwell and a team of teacher experts have written The Freedom Writers Diary Teacher’s Guide, a book that will encourage teachers and students to expand the walls of their classrooms and think outside the box. Synopsis: A standards-based teacher’s guide from the educator behind the #1 New York Times bestseller The Freedom Writers Diary, with innovative teaching techniques that will engage, empower, and enlighten.ĭon’t miss the public television documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart

Freedom writers diary