Erin Gruwell, the beloved teacher turned author who used writing to encourage her troubled students to express themselves in a new way, visited the Westmoreland Central School District on April 24 to talk to students and host a screening of her new documentary, “Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart." She was joined by former student and Freedom Writer, Mauricio "Tony" Becerra.
Gruwell is the author of the bestselling book, “The Freedom Writers Diary.” The book tells the story of Gruwell and her 150 at-risk students at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California during the early 1990s. Her students, originally labeled as “unteachable,” lived in a racially divided community filled with drugs, gang warfare and homicides. The racial division - - and the hostility, indifference and tension that came with it - - spilled into the classroom.
Determined to create a brighter future for her students, Gruwell turned to writing and literature to persuade them to embrace history, humanity and hope. She specifically used literature to compare the turmoil of the time to some of the worst examples of human’s inhumanity towards one another. Her students were particularly inspired by the writings of Anne Frank during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Elie Wiese, a young boy who, along with his father, was imprisoned in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and Zlata Filipovic, a young girl who lived through the horrors of the Bosnian War. The parallels to their own lives emboldened Gruwell’s students to write their own journals, becoming a form of solace. When the students anonymously read each other’s journals, division was replaced with unity and understanding. As a result, the “Freedom Writers” were born.
“She has a very strong message,” Westmoreland Central School District Superintendent of Schools Rocco Migliori said of Erin Gruwell. “It’s really about how people with varied backgrounds should all be able to come together because we all have common goals.”
“She has an incredible passion for student achievement and student well-being,” David Hoffman, school psychologist at the Westmoreland Central School District, added.
Told from the perspective of Gruwell and her students, “Freedom Writers: Stories from the Heart,” depicts what happened before, during and after Gruwell’s students first entered her classroom 25 years ago. A 56-minute screening of the documentary was shown in the Jr./Sr. High School auditorium. The screening, which was free and open to the public, was the first on the East Coast. It was followed by a panel discussion with Gruwell and Becerra.
Before the screening, Gruwell and Becerra spoke with students at the Primary Elementary School, Upper Elementary School and in Mrs. Macrina’s ninth grade English honors class. Utica National, a sponsor of Gruwell’s and Becerra’s visit, also hosted a small reception.