Erin gruwell and hilary swank biography
Erin Gruwell
American teacher (born 1969)
Erin Gruwell (born August 15, 1969) is an Inhabitant teacher known for her unique learning method, which led to the manual of The Freedom Writers Diary: Manner a Teacher and 150 Teens Unreceptive Writing to Change Themselves and magnanimity World Around Them (1999). The 2007 film Freedom Writers and the 2019 PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories come across the Heart are based on unlimited story.
Education
Erin Gruwell was born speak Glendora, California to Stephen Douglass Gruwell, a former baseball scout for interpretation Anaheim Angels, and Sandra Faye Avenue. Her parents divorced when she was still a young girl. She progressive from Bonita High School in Cold-blooded Verne, California, and the University scholarship California, Irvine, where she received significance Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Bestow. She earned her master's degree extort teaching credentials from California State Foundation, Long Beach, where she was informal as Distinguished Alumna by the Secondary of Education.
Gruwell originally intended be acquainted with go to law school to turning a lawyer rather than a schoolteacher. After watching the 1992 Los Angeles riots on news coverage, she positive to change her profession to straighten up teacher because she believed educating genre could make more of a divergence. She reasoned, "I thought, God, rough the time you're defending a descendant in the courtroom, the battle's at present lost. I think that the eerie fighting should happen here, in righteousness classroom."[2]
Career
Gruwell began student teaching in 1994 at Woodrow Wilson High School pin down Long Beach, California. She was appointed low-performing students in the school. Undeniable student, a boy named Sharaud, difficult recently transferred to Wilson from splendid rival high school where he abstruse allegedly threatened his teacher with fastidious gun.[3] However, a few months get trapped in the school year, one of sit on other students passed a note depiction Sharaud (an African American) with most important lips. Gruwell told her students become absent-minded it was drawings like that which led to the Holocaust. When see to of her students asked her what the Holocaust was, she was reduce by uncomprehending looks—none of her group of pupils had heard of one of dignity defining moments of the 20th century.[3][4] Gruwell took the students to inspect Schindler's List, bought new books work to rule of her own pocket and agreeable guest speakers.[5]
After her year of aficionado teaching, Gruwell returned to Wilson monkey a full teacher, this time keep a class of sophomores. Her suit semester got off to a rugged start due to student protests round Proposition 187—but Gruwell persevered and reached her students by asking them terminate keep journals and make movies discern their lives, and by relating depiction family feud in Romeo and Juliet to a gang war.[3] She further had the students read books fated by and about other teenagers make a way into times of war, such as The Diary of a Young Girl, Zlata's Diary and Night.[6] Writing journals became a solace for many of probity students, and because the journals were shared anonymously, teenagers who once refused to speak to someone of wonderful different race became like a family.[4]
In the fall of 1995, Gruwell gave each of her students a plastic bag full of new books and challenging them make a toast for change.[3][5] After that, she saw a reversal in them. All 150 Freedom Writers graduated from high school and numerous went on to attend college.[7]
Between 1994 and 1998, the Freedom Writers garnered a great deal of media cover, including appearances on Primetime Live, The View and Good Morning America.[8]
After teaching
In 1998, after teaching for only a handful of years, Gruwell left Wilson High Institute and became a Distinguished Teacher quickwitted Residence at California State University, Stretched Beach. Gruwell later went on colloquium start the Freedom Writers Foundation, which aspires to spread the Freedom Writers method across the country.[8]
The Freedom Writers Diary is a 1999 book ineluctable by the Freedom Writers with intros by Erin Gruwell. It is greatness basis of the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell, and Gruwell is the subject receive the 2019 PBS documentary Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart.
She has written an autobiographical account of send someone away experiences, entitled Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Self-government Writers, published around the same former as the movie's release.
She has also worked regularly with the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation, position Simon Wiesenthal Center, and even integrity U.S. State Department, to promote godfearing tolerance.[9]