Freedom Writers

This was the first time I have seen this film and I really enjoyed it. I am planning on becoming an English teacher, so watching this single teacher make such a profound impact was both inspiring and intimidating! But, as far as watching the film for this class's purposes, I found a lot of things that relate to CRT, especially closer to the beginning of the movie when Mrs. G didn't have the students' respect and was exposed to all of the gang violence and racism within the school and community.

The first thing that caught my attention and that I wrote in my notes for the film was a statistic said by the principal. After the intregration was forced upon this "Grade-A" school, the principal said that they lost "75% of their best students". This statement represents the CRT tenet that some people don't want to eradicate racism because the principal would rather have a more segregated and less diverse school and maintain high test scores and grades rather than allowing integration and other races into the school. I also found him saying that they lost their "best students" to be shocking - what determines a student to be "best"? Is it just test scores? Or, like Mrs. G believes, is it something more in the students that isn't necessarily measured in grades but in something given to the world.

The idea of America being a "walled community" also was really prevalent within the movie. All of the gangs were separated by race and crossing those racial boundaries was considered taboo and almost a form of betrayal to one's own ethnic group. When Mrs. G had the students switch up their desks and not sit in "walled communities", at first there was a lot of discord between the students, but it eventually led to them all developing a "family".

Lastly, the "Crossing the Line" or "Walk the Line" (or whatever it is formally called) activity seemed, to me, be a physical representation of the CRT tenet of intersectionality. All of these different races and individuals had a lot of similarities that they never would have known without this exercise.