Erin Gruwell and The Freedom Writers

Gruwell was born in California, United States. She began student teaching in 1994 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. She was assigned low-performing students in the school (computer generated IDs randomly selected the students she was to teach). One student, a boy she referred to as "Sharaud," seemed determined to make her life miserable. He had transferred to Wilson from a rival high school where he had allegedly threatened his teacher with a gun.However, a few months into the school year one of her other students passed a note depicting Sharaud (an African American) with extremely large lips. Gruwell told the class that that was the type of caricature that the Nazis had used during the Holocaust. When only one of the students knew what the Holocaust was, Gruwell changed the theme of her curriculum to tolerance. Gruwell took the students to see Schindler's List, bought new books out of her own pocket and invited guest speakers.
After her year of student teaching, Gruwell returned to Wilson as a full teacher, this time with a class of sophomores. Her fall semester got off to a rocky start due to student protests of Proposition 187. But Gruwell persevered and reached her students by asking them to keep journals and make movies of their lives, and by relating the family feud in Romeo and Juliet to a gang war. She also had the students read books written by and about other teenagers in times of war, such as The Diary of a Young Girl, Zlata's Diary and Night.Writing journals became a solace for many of the students, and because the journals were shared anonymously, teenagers who once refused to speak to someone of a different race became like a family.
In the fall of 1995, Gruwell gave each of her students a bag full of new books and had them make a toast for change.After that, she saw a turnaround in them. The students went on to surprise everyone. All 150 Freedom Writers graduated from high school and many went on to attend college.
Between 1994 and 1998, the Freedom Writers garnered a great deal of media coverage, including appearances on PrimeTime Live, The View and Good Morning America.