The legacy of former Wilson High School teacher Erin Gruwell and her students continues to grow with the recently published book Teaching Hope, a collection of stories about teaching and improving the lives of students that was written by dozens of teachers nationwide. Those who contributed to shaping the tales of inspiration are members of Gruwell’s Freedom Writers Institute, which the Long Beach resident established in order to share her story and teaching methodology with other educators.
Click here to watch Gruwell talk about the new book.
The book is a collection of tales about teaching under difficult circumstances, drawn from the experiences of more than fifty teachers nationwide who participate in Gruwell’s program. Gruwell rose to national prominence after publishing The Freedom Writers Diary about her experiences while teaching English at Long Beach’s Wilson High School in the early 90’s. That book was made into a successful motion picture called Freedom Writers, which starred Hillary Swank.
Teaching Hope continues the legacy that Gruwell has built, while both Long Beach and Wilson High School still play a large part. Today, Wilson teacher Devon Day uses many of the key methods of motivation that made Gruwell famous, and Day was a contributing writer for Teaching Hope. A member of the Freedom Writer Institute, Day is heavily involved with Gruwell’s program and the lbpost.com was proud to have covered some of the amazing effects that she has had on the lives of her students in the past school year.
For example, Day’s students established a pen-pal system with students in West Virginia in order to create understanding and tolerance between the two very different cultures, and integrate some of the values they learned through that process into their own lives here in Long Beach – mirroring some of the methods that were central in Gruwell’s book and subsequent film. Day’s students then arranged for some of their pen-pals to travel to Long Beach for a week, as they shared ideas and visited the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. To top it off, seven of Day’s students – many of whom had never been on an airplane or ventured from California – planned and organized a week-long trip to West Virginia that included a visit to Washington D.C. Day’s students have also formed friendships with survivors of the Holocaust and Khmer Rouge in order to better understand the values of tolerance.
It was a story that could have made its own movie. With Teaching Hope, Gruwell and Day may be able to show other teachers how it was done.
Since her success, Gruwell has established the Freedom Writers Foundation and the Freedom Writers Institute, which teaches some of Gruwell’s unorthodox but effective methods for motivating students. Many of those teachers contributed to Teaching Hope. Gruwell also earned her M.A. in Education from CSULB and still resides in Long Beach.