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Beyond Freedom Writers
More Inspirational Teacher Films on DVD | The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell | More DVDs Starring Hilary Swank |
As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of âunteachable, at-riskâ students. One day she i! ntercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily ! declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaustâ"only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlataâs Diary: A Childâs Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the âFreedom Writersâ in homage to the civil rights activists âThe Freedom Riders.â
With funds raised by a âRead-a-thon for Tolerance,â they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwellâs students were âthe real heroes.â Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognitionâ"appearances on âPrime Time Liveâ! and âAll Things Considered,â coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Rileyâ"and educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college.
With powerful entries from the studentsâ own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students.
The authorsâ proceeds from this book will be donated to The Tolerance Education Foundation, an organization set up to pay for the Freedom Writersâ college tuition. Erin Gruwell is now a visiting professor at California State University, Long Beach, where some of her students are Freedom Writers.Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 03/20/2007 Run time: 122 minutes Rating: Pg13Though the "inspirational teacher" theme may feel done to death, Freedo! m Writers succeeds because it emphasizes the students as m! uch as t he teacher. Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby, Boys Don't Cry) comes to a southern California high school bubbling over with naive optimism, but quickly discovers that her unruly classroom isn't easily won over by her good intentions. After a few floundering attempts to connect with her students, Gruwell gives them the assignment of keeping journals about their own lives--an assignment that the class bites into with relish, which eventually bonds them together and pushes racial rivalries aside. This plotline has been made before, sometimes well, sometimes poorly; Freedom Writers, by drawing heavily from the published journals of the students--and thanks to a (mostly) unheroic script, direction that emphasizes individual characters over stereotypes, and rigorous performances from the whole cast--makes the story seem fresh and genuine. Swank does solid work, but the standouts are April L. Hernandez as a girl whose gang wants her to lie and ! send an innocent boy to jail and Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake) as a teacher who resents Gruwell's offbeat success. Also featuring Patrick Dempsey (Grey's Anatomy), Scott Glenn (The Right Stuff), and a plethora of strong young actors. --Bret Fetzer
Beyond Freedom Writers
More Inspirational Teacher Films on DVD | The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell | More DVDs Starring Hilary Swank |
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