![]() ![]() Upon rewatching, however, I have swapped my lens of service for a lens of critique, utilizing course readings and experiences in my field placement as a groundwork for analysis. They needed our help, just as the students in Freedom Writers needed Erin Gruwell’s help.Īt the time, I wasn’t thinking critically about the content of Freedom Writers, nor about the implications of how it was shown to my class. Freedom Writers acted as an exemplar of charitable service as we were preparing to launch into our yearly coat drive for public elementary school students in our area. If there was one thing my school hoped that we would take out of our education, it was that there are people less fortunate than us, and we need to help them. At the time, we watched Freedom Writers through the lens of charitable service, a theme rampant in our dioceses’ curriculum. I was attending a Catholic school with a predominantly white student body regarding the honors-level English class in which I watched the movie, I remember only Irish and Italian Catholic students. As the students' diaries transform from schoolwork into life preservers, Gruwell's commitment to them grows and affects her in ways she did not imagine.I first watched the movie Freedom Writers in my seventh grade English class. Based on a true story, Freedom Writers is an inspirational tale and testimony to courage, hope and the human spirit's triumph over intolerance. After sharing their stories with one another, the students see their shared experience for the first time and open up to the idea that there are possibilities in life outside of making it to the age of eighteen. Knowing that every one of her students has a story to tell, Erin encourages them to keep a daily journal of their thoughts and experiences. She brings in music from the ‘Hood, and literature from another kind of ghetto, The Diary of Anne Frank, and with these simple tools she opens her students' eyes to the experiences of those suffering intolerance throughout the world and the struggles of those outside their own communities. They spark a transformation in the classroom, compel them to listen and force her to take off her idealistic blinders and take in the kids' survival stories of their undeclared war on the streets. ![]() A racially motivated gang shooting witnessed by a Latina gang member in Erin's class, and an an ugly racial cartoon that Erin intercepts during class, become the most unwittingly dynamic teaching aids. Despite her students' obstinate refusal to participate during class, Erin tries various means to engage them on a daily basis.īut then ghetto reality steps in to focus the picture. On the surface, the only thing they share is their hatred for each other and the understanding that they are simply being warehoused in the educational system until they are old enough to disappear. Her class, a diverse group of racially charged teenagers from different walks of life - African Americans, Latinos, Asians, juvenile delinquents, gang members, and underprivileged students from poor neighborhoods - hope for nothing more than to make it through the day. Fresh-faced, idealistic twenty-three-year-old Erin Gruwell ( Hilary Swank) is ready to take on the world as she steps inside Wilson High School for her first day of teaching.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |