#FREEDOM WRITERS CAST PROFESSIONAL#

Two students, Eva ( April Lee Hernández), a Latino-American girl and narrator for much of the film, and Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan), a Cambodian refugee, frequent the same convenience store. Instead, she suggests that Gruwell focuses on instilling concepts of discipline and obedience in her classroom. For example, her department head refuses to provide Gruwell with an adequate number of books for her class because she insists they will get damaged and lost.

#FREEDOM WRITERS CAST PROFESSIONAL#

Not only is Gruwell challenged with gaining her students' trust on personal and academic levels, but she must do so with very little support from her professional peers and district higher-ups. This causes problems, as gang fights break out and, consequently, most of her students stop attending class. Her students self-segregate into racial groups within the classroom. Her enthusiasm is challenged when she finds her class is composed of 'at-risk' students, the 'untouchables,' and not the eager-for-college students she expected. In 1994, in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Erin Gruwell, an enthusiastic young teacher starts at the school. Evidently, ‘Freedom Writers’ is based on an amazing true story.Woodrow Wilson Classical High School is a formerly high-achieving school which has encountered some difficulties bearing its new racial integration plan. This led to the publication of the New York Times best-selling book and the critically acclaimed film. And I just had to understand why they were resistant to reading and writing in school.” She actively sought to uncover their stories, and by doing that, she helped them become storytellers. After Gruwell established the non-profit organization Freedom Writers Foundation in 1997 with the Kingston Technology Company co-founder John Tu acting as the benefactor, some of her former students started working under her.Īsked in an interview about how she connected with her students, Gruwell stated that “as a new teacher, I just wanted my students to put down their fists and pick up a pen and embrace that cliché that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Gruwell encouraged her students to read books like ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, ‘Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo’ by Zlata Filipović, and Anne Frank’s ‘The Diary of a Young Girl.’ The last one, in particular, had a remarkable effect on several of her students, including a girl named Maria Reyes, who is reportedly the inspiration for the character Eva Benitez (April Lee Hernández) in the film.Ī post shared by Freedom Writers all 150 of Gruwell’s students graduated from high school, and quite a few of them went on to attend college. The students came to be known as the Freedom Writers, the name of which serves as a tribute to the 1960s multiracial civil rights group Freedom Riders. They realized that they had more things that they thought in common beyond racial differences and community violence. Just like in the film, the students started keeping journals following her instruction, and that habit brought them closer to each other than ever before. She taught the same group of students in their sophomore year. She also convinced distinguished personalities to come and speak to her students. She then arranged for them to watch ‘ Schindler’s List’ and purchased books with her own money. Much to her surprise, most of her students didn’t know about one of the bleakest chapters of human history.

After she came across a note depicting a racist caricature of one of their classmates, she spoke to them about how racist drawings like that were indirectly connected to horrifying events in world history such as the Holocaust. When Gruwell started teaching, her optimism and tenacity were met with skepticism from the students. As a result, the students came to believe that the system had betrayed them. The students that she was assigned to were reportedly regarded as “ unteachable” by school administrators. In 1994, Gruwell joined Woodrow Wilson High as a student-teacher. LaGravenese developed the script for the film from the 1999 book ‘The Freedom Writers Diary,’ a compiled version of the journal entries by the real Erin Gruwell and her students. Yes, ‘Freedom Writers’ is based on a true story. Is Freedom Writers Based on a True Story?

Freedom writers cast