First Posted: 9/11/2010
PEMBROKE Nationally acclaimed educator Erin Gruwell will speak in the Givens Performing Arts Center at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
Gruwell, whose story was made into the 2007 movie, Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank, is the first speaker in UNCPs 2010-2011 Distinguished Speaker Series.
The series is free to the public.
The public school teacher unleashed the power of telling stories to teach students in a school that most had written off.
Nothing could have prepared Gruwell for her first day teaching at Long Beach High School in California. Many of her students from this tough, racially divided school were deemed unteachable and unreachable. Undeterred, Gruwell delivered an academic miracle.
Finding her classroom a safe haven, the Freedom Writers transcribed their stories on paper, transforming their lives one word at a time. Through Gruwells efforts, the stories were published in the book Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them.
All 150 of her students went on to graduate and attend college.
In the beginning I was pretty nave and did not know a lot about at-risk teens. I knew I could see past color and culture, but I did not know how to get to the hearts of these young people, Gruwell said. So I gave them a pen and told them to share their experiences through the art of writing.
Through writing, my students discovered tolerance and respect for one another, she said.
Gruwell began student teaching in 1994 at Woodrow Wilson High School. Her classes contained the lowest-performing students in the school.
In 1998, Gruwell left Wilson High School to become a distinguished teacher in residence at California State University, Long Beach. Teachers and prospective teachers could learn from her experiences and find a way to inspire other disadvantaged students.
Gruwell founded the Freedom Writers Foundation, which aspires to spread her method across the country.
In 2000, at just 30 years old, she ran for Congress. Her second book, Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers, was published about the same time as the movies release.
The Distinguished Speaker Series will continue on Nov. 29 with Adam Beach, an actor originally from Manitoba, Canada, with Saulteaux (First Nation) heritage.
