The Connected Curriculum – Challenge #22

Demonstrate a Conviction That Personal Writing Still Belongs in the Classroom

Education& Creativity

*Freedom Writers ~ Part 1 of 2*

Just two short years after the Los Angeles riots in 1992 new teacher Erin Gruwell entered into her classroom at Long Beach High School. The school sat in a gang war zone, and her student mix was black, Latino, and Asian young people. In less than one school term, Erin created a real difference in an atmosphere that was full of tension, anger, and hatred. As you will see, this story turns out to be one well worth watching.

 

Discouraged by her efforts to motivate her low-achieving students, she gave out journals and solicited the kids to record thoughts about their own lives. Their expressive personal essays were subsequently published in The Freedom Writers Diary, a book that inspired the 2007 film (staring Hilary Swank) Freedom Writers.   

 

 

At the beginning of Freedom Writers, Gruwell is lecturing helplessly in front of a blackboard, trying to demonstrate essay writing while the students express their disgust.  She had discovered on her first day of class that she had 150 kids who hated writing, hated her, and hated everything.  Full of conviction that personal writing belongs in the classroom Gruwell sets out to discover how to make things more relevant to her students.  She struggles with the challenge of engaging the kids who from the start didn’t want to read or write. Gruwell starts looking for  stories that matter to them, stories about things that are relevant to kids who can’t see a future outside of their poverty stricken community. In her book The Freedom Writers Diary, Gruwell states “I love traditional poems, but when you have your students sit down and deconstruct Tupac’s “The Rose That Grew from Concrete,” they see that you care enough about them to find subject matters to write about in their world.”

Students have to be able to think critically.  With this approach Gruwell was able to teach her students the fundamentals of writing in the process of having them read and write in their journals.  As we have all discovered; if it’s too robotic and scripted, the students will tune you out and learn nothing.  We should also all know that in order to bring learning to life, a combination of different learning modalities – visual, kinesthetic, auditory, needs to be used. In an edited scene, Gruwell brings in two sandwiches.  One of which is a really basic sandwich: a slice of white bread, a slice of baloney, and another slice of white bread.  In contrast, the other one is a really impressive sandwich that has homemade French bread, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce and a heap of ham.  She uses these as a metaphor to assist her students in deconstructing sentences. They can pen a really basic sentence, or they can use language to connect all of these other things. 

Even as a technology teacher I saw this journaling as a means to an end -- an approach to get students energized about writing so they can progress to writing academic papers.  I pursued this thought and turned it into a critical thinking/composing at the keyboard activity. With a little effort and research I came upon a wealth of resources, all off the internet and I was able to “connect my curriculum”.

The discussion guide, Freedom Writers: Express Yourself is designed for use after reading the book and/or viewing the movie. It offers discussion topics (which I turned into writing/typing prompts) for youth ages 13 - 18. It is offered by the National Collaboration for Youth, an institute which offers a unified voice for its coalition of national, nonprofit, youth development organizations.  The 35-year-old organization focuses on improving the conditions of children in the United States and empowers youth to realize their full potential. As an aftereffect, development and youth empowerment play a key role in the discussion guide for Freedom Writers.

As an initial step, I showed my students the movie The Freedom Writers. As timing would have it, I needed an additional lesson to fill in the gaps while my students were rotating through a standardized computer testing schedule. I never ONCE had to redirect a student or ask them to quiet down during this movie.  They were completely and totally immersed in it and its message.  They came in the next day begging to see more. After observing this exceptionally high level of interest, I decided to continue my journey of creating a critical thinking/composing at the keyboard activity.  Upon finding the Freedom Writers: Express Yourself Discussion Guide online I decided to replace our current “Bell Activity” of keyboarding drills with a daily journaling activity based on the prompts from the study guide.  In my twenty odd years of teaching, I have NEVER had students more engaged than with this project based activity.  I set up a simple template for them to follow and now each day they come into class, sit down immediately, and get to work….all on their own!

Coming tomorrow...Part 2 of The Freedom Writers.
 

Collaborate and connect your curriculum!