Freedom Writers is a movie about a young woman, Erin Gruwell, who decides that she wants to help out a group of students in a school in California. But when she arrives at the school she soon finds out that the kids do not want her help. When she first started teaching the kids gave her no respect and showed no interest in learning. Many of the kids had hard pasts that they could not get passed, like Marcus, when he was younger his friend, Clive, accidentally shot himself and died, when the police came they put Marcus in juvenile hall for the murder of Clive. Marcus had been in and out of prison ever since.
The kids in Erin's class had a lot of out of school problems that they had to worry about and did not care for their academic life. They thought they could not get out of their present life and did not think there was a point to try. Erin, trying to break down the barriers between the students and her, tried many different techniques. She talked about what the Nazi's did to show what gang violence can leaded to. She also did things to show how the rival gangs all have gone through the same thing and was not that different. It also made them realize how series what they were doing was. She also tried to use curriculum to connect with her students. She had them read the Diary of Ann Frank because they, like Ann Frank, grew up in a world that was full of violence and anger. The other teacher did not like what Erin was doing at first however. The head of the English department did not even want to give them books because she was afraid they would ruin them. Erin never stopped believing in them and that was what helped them to succeed in her class. Her student needed someone that believed in them because they did not.
From this movie I learned that believing in your students is a big part of teaching because kids need someone in their lives that believes that they can make it.
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