Gruwell told her students that it was drawings like that which led to the Holocaust. However, a few months into the school year, one of her other students passed a note depicting Sharaud (an African American) with large lips. One student, a boy named Sharaud, had recently transferred to Wilson from a rival high school where he had allegedly threatened his teacher with a gun. She was assigned low-performing students in the school. Gruwell began student teaching in 1994 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. I think that the real fighting should happen here, in the classroom." Career She reasoned, "I thought, God, by the time you're defending a kid in the courtroom, the battle's already lost. After watching the 1992 Los Angeles riots on news coverage, she decided to change her profession to a teacher because she believed educating students could make more of a difference. She earned her master's degree and teaching credentials from California State University, Long Beach, where she was honored as Distinguished Alumna by the School of Education.Įrin originally intended to go to law school to become a lawyer rather than a teacher. 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. Her parents divorced when she was still a young girl. The 2007 film Freedom Writers and 2019 PBS documentary, Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart, are based on her story.Įrin Gruwell was born in Glendora, California to Stephen Douglass Gruwell, a formal baseball scout for the Anaheim Angels, and Sandra Faye Alley. Erin Gruwell (born August 15, 1969) is an American teacher known for her unique teaching method, which led to the publication of The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them (1999).
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