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Freedom Writers

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In the movie “ Freedom Writers “, Ms Erin Gruwell explains, with the right discipline & dedication anyone can change, but one has to want to change. How does she get them to want to change? “Freedom Writers”, was made in 2007, and set in Long Beach California at Woodrow Wilson High School. It is about a class of students and the challenges they are facing. We get to know the teacher, Mrs Gruwell, an English teacher, first time as voluntary integration Programme teacher; she is one of the characters that are facing a challenge. She gets a class full of children that don’t care about life or education. She faces a challenge to come to class and teach these students and to make it worthwhile for them to come to school. The students hang out with others of their own kind (Black people with black people, white people with white people, Asian with Asian people, Hispanic with Hispanic, etc.) and fight the ones that are not of their race. In the classrooms, students are always fighting, most of them in gangs, and they don’t really care about school, they only go to school because they are forced to, it was either school or boot camp. The teachers also don’t care much for the students. But Mrs Gruwell makes them change their perspective and they actually start to change.
An inspiring scene in the movie, is when Mrs Gruwell plays a really mind opening game with the class. After making a line with sticky tape and explaining to step on the line if the question is true to you, she asks the class some questions, others being quite open and personal. Certain students look at others, knowing their different from them because of their colour or background, but starting to realise that they have been through the same life problems, that not many teenagers in our days would go through, but the main thing is they have certain things in common, things they would usually fight about in the class room. They start to realise the only way to get along and come to school to want to learn is to treat everyone with equal respect and rights, because after all they are all human and there to learn.

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