Erin Gruwell insists "there was no master plan" behind her decision to assign journal entries as a freshman English class exercise. But what she heard in students' writing echoed the themes of literature: Loss and longing. Hope in the face of fear. A need to be heard. Courage to dream of a better future despite growing up in a setting that one boy compared to a war zone.
Gruwell overcame steep odds herself in order to help these kids share their stories with an international audience. In the process, students stopped seeing themselves as "rejects" and "unteachables," and took on a new identity: Freedom Writers. Their remarkable saga is chronicled in the students' own words in The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. The class writing project may have started small, Gruwell admits, "but it took on a life of its own."
Gruwell will be sharing highlights of this story when she delivers the keynote address at the Education Now and in the Future Conference, hosted by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in February. (See end of this story for details.) As a preview, she agreed to share with the readers of Northwest Education some thoughts on her approach to writing as a force for change.
Today Ms.Gruwell assigned a new writing project. We each are going to choose one of our favorite journal entries and combine them into a classroom book... Ms. Gruwell wants us to pick an entry about an event that changed our lives. In my case, there is only one that really sticks out, but I want to forget it. Not because it is embarrassing, but because it is the most painful one.
While she was still a preppy-looking student teacher at Wilson High in racially diverse Long Beach, California, Gruwell experienced one of those classroom moments that changes everything. She happened to intercept a piece of paper that was making the rounds, leaving a ripple of laughter in its wake. The paper held a crude caricature of a certain black student with a bad attitude and worse disciplinary record. When Gruwell got hold of the paper, she went ballistic, telling her students the thick-lipped cartoon was like the propaganda the Nazis used during the Holocaust. Then a student asked her, "What's the Holocaust?" In that instant, a new curriculum was born. Gruwell recalls, "I immediately decided to throw out my meticulously planned lessons and make tolerance the core of my curriculum."
Tolerance can be a tough sell to students who have to dodge bullets on their way home. The challenge to Gruwell seemed urgent: "How could I motivate them to pick up a pen instead of a gun?" She introduced them to books written by young people who had come of age during wartime: The Diary of Anne Frank, for instance, and Zlata's Diary, describing a childhood in Bosnia. "My students saw that these other kids, living in real wars, had picked up pens, chronicled their pain, and made their story immortal."
If the stories from Room 203 were going to matter to anyone, Gruwell told students, they had to be honest. She assured students of anonymity, assigning each one a number. Using donated computers, all used the same 12-point, Times New Roman typeface. They all signed on to an honor code, worked out with the approval of the superintendent and lawyer for the district. Among themselves, they called their truth-telling "keepin' it real."
Previously, students had been inhibited in their writing. Now, cloaked in anonymity, "they were liberated. It was cathartic. They got into controversial topics," Gruwell says, including drugs, guns, sexual abuse, harassment, abortion. "It was a wellspring."
Although the writers remained anonymous, students took turns reading aloud each others' entries. "I constantly used their stories to teach," Gruwell says. "We read aloud, edited aloud. I could take something from a journal and compare it to a story by T.C. Boyle or Amy Tan or Gary Soto. We could look at the work side by side, juxtaposing themes or comparing literary techniques. It's an authentic way to teach."
Authenticity was another key lesson. "We talked about being real vs. dramatizing. You can't embellish," Gruwell says, "or it takes away from the sincerity."
Gradually, Gruwell and her students realized the importance of sharing their work with a larger audience. "It's much more real when read by others," she says. In the tradition of the Freedom Riders of the 1960s, they called themselves the Freedom Writers. They began reaching beyond the confines of Room 203, sharing stories and touching lives all around the world. Eventually, their stories brought them face-to-face with their new heroes: Zlata Filipovic, author of Zlata's Diary, and Miep Gies, who gave shelter to Anne Frank.
I didn't realize writing was so hard. It's very tedious and overwhelming, but satisfying at the same time. The writing assignments I do for Ms. G's class require draft after draft until everything is perfect. I can't begin to imagine how hard Nancy Wride has it when she goes through everything over and over to finish a story. That's what she does, she tries to make her work perfect for the Los Angeles Times. Nancy Wride is a wonderful reporter who just wrote a story about us. ... When Nancy's story was published, it felt as if the entire world had read it and then decided to call Room 203.
It takes not only honesty but, often, many drafts to produce powerful writing. That's another message that Gruwell's students learned while honing their diaries into publishable pieces. She learned to teach the writing process while a graduate student, and coached her students through the steps of drafting, revising, peer editing, and more revising. She brought in professional writers to talk about their own process for producing polished work. And she used herself as a model, writing and revising right alongside her students.
Many students were struggling academically when they arrived in Gruwell's class. She used exercises to engage all types of students, including auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners. "I used a number of modalities to encourage writing. We did a lot of hands-on things," to give students experiences that would improve their writing. A favorite classroom metaphor: the hamburger. "We talked about a hamburger vs. a cheeseburger vs. a double double. The plain burger is just meat and bun. What makes the double double so special? It's the meat and the bun and the sauce and the cheese." Writing can be plain or delicious with details, too. Gruwell used all kinds of props to make sure her message got through—including, of course, "lots of burgers."
Not only did students have freedom to explore tough topics in their diaries, but they were free to "break away from the five-paragraph frame. I encouraged them not to use the standard format. I didn't want them to feel so confined that they'd wind up bitter about writing."
Instead, the Freedom Writers wound up becoming ambassadors for tolerance, winning national recognition, and having their diaries published as a book. A film is in the works. They have been heard by politicians and entertainers, and helped by generous patrons. Many are now in college—30 of them are back together this year with Gruwell, only this time it's at California State University at Long Beach where she's a distinguished educator. "They're such a unified family. They feel infallible," she says of her community of young writers.
"They aren't rock stars," adds Gruwell. "They're kids who changed their personas," and, just maybe, the world. "Education is the great equalizer." As one student shared in The Freedom Writers Diary, Day 177: "Days like this create memories worth living for."
Education Now and in the Future will take place February 10-11, 2003, at the Portland Hilton, with researchers and practitioners addressing a wide range of topics. Erin Gruwell will deliver her keynote address during lunch on February 11. The same afternoon, she will participate in a workshop called Our Lives in Our Own Words, which will explore the power of personal narratives for academic and personal growth. Conference information and registration materials are available online at www.nwrel.org/enf. To receive a conference catalog by mail, e-mail a request to enf@nwrel.org or call 1-800-547-6339, ext. 187.
Starting February 12, Portland State University's Graduate School of Education is offering more indepth training on Gruwell's tolerance-based writing curriculum. For information about the continuing education course, see the
online description at www.ceed.pdx.edu/freedom. 
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