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May 23, 2008
Famed teacher elicits tears
Erin Gruwell praises King David High School students.
PAT JOHNSON
There were many wet sleeves leaving the River Rock Casino May 14, but it wasn't lost wages that had attendees sniffling. The evening was a one-two emotional punch of the city's Jewish high school saying goodbye to the principal who led it through a period of great growth and change, coupled with a guest speaker whose inspirational story of turning around the lives of disadvantaged L.A. kids had many in the audience in tears.
The featured speaker was Erin Gruwell, the young, naïve teacher who inspired the film Freedom Writers, as well as a book of the same title, featuring raw testimony from the journals of her diverse and deeply troubled students.
For those who had not seen the movie or read the book, a feature from network television provided an overview of the remarkable turnaround of Gruwell's 150 students, who included a girl with a court-ordered electronic ankle monitor, a gun-packing freshman and gang members whose seething rivalries resulted at one point in a school-wide rumble. Most of the students, who school administrators viewed as unteachable, were victims of the pandemic crime around them, not its perpetrators, and, while the hard shells of the tough students were not easy for Gruwell to crack, the first-time teacher discovered a way to reach them.
Though Romeo and Juliet was a story of gang tragedy, of sorts, Gruwell found a story that had more immediate resonance for young people who risked death every time they stepped into the street – The Diary of Anne Frank.
When a cruel caricature of one of her African-American students was circulated in the classroom, Gruwell saw in the exaggerated lips the same type of hateful distortion employed by the Nazis. When she made this observation to her class, she discovered that, while most of her students had been shot at, just one knew what the Holocaust was.
Gruwell's students expected to die young, she told the sold-out audience in the River Rock's show theatre, as they had seen so many of their friends, siblings and parents die. Long-range planning and emphasis on academics were not priorities for students whose lives were dominated by violence and deprivation.
The early months of her teaching career were beyond her expectations, as were the stonewalling of school administrators to Gruwell's innovations and the lack of support from her husband, who soon left their marriage.
But this was not a venue Gruwell fell into accidentally. She had intended to become a lawyer, but was moved by the Los Angeles riots of 1992 to become a teacher, contending that, by the time at-risk youths reached the court system, it was too late to reach them.
Gruwell's perseverance ultimately led to one of the most heralded stories in contemporary pedagogy. Most of her students had never read a book cover to cover and some had grade point averages of 0.5. But after four years with Gruwell, every one graduated from high school and many proceeded to college.
"What happens when you tell kids again and again that they're dumb, they're stupid, they're nothing?" she asked. "It's a horrible self-fulfilling prophesy."
By introducing them to young writers with starkly different experiences, yet with commonalities of spirit, Gruwell not only led them to reading, but to a greater sense of humanity, openness and tolerance.
"I wanted them to find themselves somewhere within that attic," Gruwell said of giving her students Anne Frank's diary.
Elie Wiesel saw his family perish in the Nazis' chimneys and, perhaps more than anyone, made the world aware of the inhumanity, winning a Nobel Prize for the literary treatment of his excruciating memories. Anne Frank did not live, but nonetheless managed to tell her story. Gruwell also introduced students to the book Zlata's Diary, by Zlata Filipovic, a young girl living in Sarajevo during the siege of 1992. In these journals of young people pondering death, violence and the ways of humankind, Gruwell found teaching tools that could open her students to new ways of comprehending their own troubles.
Gruwell also gave her students empty books – journals – which they filled with stories that shocked the comfortably middle-class Gruwell.
"That paper was a way for them to bear witness," Gruwell said.
"Every single one of my kids had some kind of Odyssey, some kind of journey," she added, alluding to the Homeric challenges of the hero of one of the standard curriculum texts. The journals constituted the first time many of the kids had told their stories – or the first time anyone had listened compassionately.
Gruwell initiated a "Toast for Change," featuring sparkling cider and plastic stemware, at which each of her students pledged to make a change in their lives and leave the past behind.
"I guess I wanted to change. I just didn't know how," says one student in the video.
Before long, through changes of heart that all of Hollywood's special effects have still not been able to adequately depict on screen, Gruwell's students shifted from tracks leading perilously to hopeless ends onto a path of hopeful and successful young adulthood.
"Is there any way we can order this book in Spanish?" one of Gruwell's students asked her about The Diary of Anne Frank, "because my mama wants to read about the girl who changed my life."
The emotional event at the River Rock, which was co-chaired by Judy Mandleman and Cheryl Stein, continued, as Gruwell recounted her day spent at King David High School, where she said she was on the verge of tears, seeing the social conscience of King David students and their commitment to tikkun olam (repair of the world) exemplified by the school's dedication to educating and advocating against genocide in Darfur.
"It's an honor for me as a teacher to be a student to these kids," Gruwell said.
The evening featured another toast to change: a sendoff to King David's principal of five years, Perry Seidelman. Seidelman, who presided over the school's transition from temporary quarters in portable buildings into the dramatic new Jewish high school on 41st Avenue, led the institution through the years of its most rapid growth in enrolment. He was fêted by the president of the school's board and a former student, who called Seidelman "approachable, friendly and understanding," as well as an "efficient disciplinarian."
Seidelman insisted that his departure was less a retirement than "a new chapter in my life," and said that working in a school, alongside scientists, athletes, artists and musicians, has been a great experience.
"I consider myself fortunate beyond dreams," he said.
Pat Johnson is, among other things, director of development and communications for Vancouver Hillel.
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