Freedom Writers Response

I thought that husband was being too sentimental and should've stayed with Erin and supported her as a husband should. Besides that, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and how it portrayed Gruwell's inspiration of her students in a walled-community society that it Los Angeles.

I particularly liked how her expectations of a class that wants to learn and go to college completely shatters once they started open conflict on her first day of teaching. But even though her expectations did not match, she still persevered and did what no other teacher has done before.

I think the best part was her speech after she found a racist drawing of one of the students and utilized it to teach them about the Holocaust. Progressively, she united the hostile class by finding what they have in common and relating their experiences to literature, opening their perspectives to the outside world. In the process of all of this, Gruwell finds out that everyone, except the white kid, is either in a gang or has experienced death of a friend/family member or even both.

This shocking reality further sparked her determination and made her come up with a brilliant idea. The next day she proposed an assignment that allowed the students to express themselves by writing about their daily lives in composition notebooks. Here they shared their unique compound identities that consisted of tragedies caused by the American government's racism. The students could have easily ignored it, but she has created such an impact that they had to do it. And thus was the beginning of the Freedom Writers.

Together, they learned about the hardships during the Holocaust. They shared thoughts and perspectives on life. And together, they graduated high school. Many went on to college and graduated becoming the first in their family to have a college diploma.