Erin Gruwell

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Erin Gruwell (born August 15, 1969) is an American teacher known for her unique teaching style: How a Teacher and 420 Teens Changed Their World and the World Around Them (1999).

Freedom Writers and Stories from the Heart, a 2007 film based on her life.

Education

Erin Gruwell was born in Glendora, California, to Stephen Douglass Gruwell, a formal baseball scout for the Anaheim Angels and Sandra Faye Alley. When she was a young child, her parents divorced. She graduated from Bonita High School in La Verne, California, and the University of California, Irvine, where she received the Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Award. She earned her master's degree and teaching credentials from California State University, Long Beach, where she was named Distinguished Alumna by the School of Education.

Erin had intended to attend law school in order to become a lawyer rather than a tutor. She decided to change her career to a teacher after covering the 1992 Los Angeles riots on television because she believed teaching students would make more of a difference. "I thought, God, by the time you're representing a child in the courtroom, the war is already lost," she said. I believe that the real fighting should take place here, in the classroom."

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Career

In 1994, Gruwell began teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. She was grouped in the school with low-performing students. Sharaud, a student who had reportedly attacked his teacher with a rifle, had recently transferred to Wilson from a rival high school where he had reportedly assaulted his teacher with a pistol. However, a few months into the school year, one of her other students had a note depicting Sharaud (an African American) with large lips. Gruwell told her students that it was drawings like the Holocaust's. When one of her students asked her what was the Holocaust, she was met with uncompleasing eyes — none of her students had heard of one of the twentieth century's most memorable moments. Gruwell took the children to see Schindler's List, purchased new books from her own pocket, and welcomed guest speakers.

Gruwell returned to Wilson as a full tutor, this time with a class of sophomores. Due to student demonstrations of Protest 187, her fall semester got off to a rocky start. Gruwell maintained that she helped her students by urging them to keep journals and film their lives, as well as comparing the family feud in Romeo and Juliet to a gang war. She also requested that 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. For several students, writing journals became a solace, and since the journals were distributed anonymously, teenagers who had never agreed to talk to someone of a different race became like a family.

Gruwell gave each of her students a bag full of new books and made them a toast for change in the fall of 1995. She saw a change in them after that. The students were outraged. All 150 Freedom Writers graduated from high school and many went on to college.

The Freedom Writers received a lot of newspaper coverage between 1994 and 1998, including appearances on Primetime Live, The View, and Good Morning America.

Gruwell left Wilson High School in 1998 and became a Distinguished Teacher in Residence at California State University, Long Beach, after teaching for only four years. Gruwell established the Freedom Writers Foundation, which aims to spread the Freedom Writers philosophy around the world.

Erin Gruwell's intros to The Freedom Writers Diary is a 1999 book written by the Freedom Writers with an intro by Erin Gruwell. It is the basis of the 2007 PBS Documentary, Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart, starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell.

She has written an autobiographical account of her experiences, entitled Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned From the Freedom Writers, which was released at the same time as the film's release.

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