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Whistle Stopper - The Freedom Writers Diary : How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $7.87
Your Save: $ 6.08 ( 44% )
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Manufacturer: Main Street Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.235
EAN: 9780385494229
ISBN: 038549422X
Label: Main Street Books
Manufacturer: Main Street Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1999-10-12
Publisher: Main Street Books
Release Date: 1999-10-12
Studio: Main Street Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A novel that can inspire anyone who reads it
Comment: The novel The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them is an exceptional book detailing the extraordinary things that a teacher and her class managed to accomplish in four years of high school. The novel is a collaborative effort between a teacher, Erin Gruwell, and her 150 students. The novel takes place over a four year period, the four years of high school for these students from the fall of 1994 to the spring of 1998. The students decide to name themselves The Freedom Writers as an allusion to the Freedom Riders, a group of black and white people who rode a bus together as one from the north to the south during the civil rights movement as an act of peaceful protest.
The novel can be read and enjoyed by anyone. It was written to show that anything is possible to accomplish despite the hardships and obstacles that may be forced upon us. Furthermore, the novel aims to promote harmony and friendship among all humans no matter what their race or backgrounds. The students and Ms. Gruwell all go through highs and lows. They experience moments of greatness and moments where they feel insignificant. They all must find a way to get over this, while also dealing with scrutiny from their peers, the community around them, and even other teachers at the school.
However despite the overwhelming odds against them, these students achieve something unbelievable. The novel is broken into semesters and as a reader, we can see the progression of these students. In the first semester the students have no faith in their teacher or themselves. In the very first diary entry a student writes, "I always thought `odd' was a three-letter word; but today I found out it has seven, and they spell G-R-U-W-E-L-L. My freshman English teacher is way out there...The administrators should have known better that to giver her this class, but I guess she didn't know any better than to take it. How is she going to handle four classes full of this school's rejects?". The students dislike their teacher and they dislike her ideas that they can actually make something of themselves. They do not agree with her argument that anything is possible and that they can overcome their differences and accomplish something together.
Over the years Ms. Gruwell manages to change the student's perspectives through projects and literature. They read many selections to which they can personally relate, including Romeo & Juliet, The Diary of Anne Frank, Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo, and The Color Purple among others. Through their efforts the students are allowed to meet many other extraordinary people including Zlata, the author of Zlata's Diary, and Miep Gies, the amazing woman responsible for hiding Anne Frank and her family and also the person who discovered Anne's diary and shared it with the world. From hearing these stories the students begin to believe what Ms. Gruwell has been trying to convey to them.
Eventually the students start to connect to one another. One student writes about her friendship, "...yet I can't even go to a movie with my friend because she's white. Why does that matter any more? I thought we were in a new era and were getting over the race issue?". These students begin to question the ideas that cross-racial friendships and relationships are wrong. They don't see what the big deal is. The students even cross gender lines. While peer editing, a male student reads a diary entry about a girl who had to get an abortion and can empathize with her because his girlfriend had gotten an abortion and he saw what she went through. He even writes an encouraging note to the author telling her "I feel your pain--you're not alone!".
Following these students through their high school years we can see the amazing transformations they go through. They not only believe that they can accomplish the unbelievable, they actually do. I believe these passages, and the subsequent success of the novel, are proof of the author's validity. The original arguments made by Ms. Gruwell hold true in the end and the students accomplish remarkable things and destroy the stereotypes and restrictions that society has placed on them.
I would recommend this novel to anyone. It is great for students because it can help them through the difficult times faced in school. It is great for teachers because it shows what a teacher can accomplish if he or she does not give up and sticks to a dream. It is great for anyone else because it shares remarkable, true stories of ordinary people accomplishing the extraordinary.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Freedom Writers Diary
Comment: I saw the movie and thought it was great. I saw that they had a book and figured that it would be interesting to read, but it wasn't. The movie was enough..
Customer Rating:
Summary: FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY
Comment: VERY VERY GOOD. AS A TEACHER, I WAS HAPPY WITH THE ABILITY OF THIS TEACHER TO TOUCH AND CHANGE LIVES IN HER CLASSROOM.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Freedom Writers
Comment: The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to
Change Themselves and the World Around Them
An examination of the humanity that exists within all of us, The Freedom Writers Diary examines the factors and behaviors that affect the lives of the youth in her school that were considered "basic" and even potentially dangerous at times. A truly directed and dedicated novel conceived of and compiled by one teacher, Erin Gruwell, these are the impacting and affecting true stories of those who are seen and yet remained invisible in their own lives. These collections of the human spirit are written entirely by Mrs. Gruwell and her 150 students of Wilson High School in Long Beach, California.
During her second year of teaching career at Wilson High School, Erin Gruwell provided the diaries as the means for cultural and internal reflections among her students over time. Although the diary entries are numbered for anonymity sake, the division among the students because of cultural and ethnic reasons is reflected in entry # 5 which states, "Everyone, including me, eats lunch with their own kind, and that's that" (The Freedom Writers: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them, Gruwell, Page 8).
All the entries collected into this unique type of forum give the reader of sense of commonality among people who otherwise would have initially denied any such cohesiveness. In affect, by including the works of the individual authors, a sense of the environments and lifestyles which these students lead can be more readily understood. So this book challenges the reader to experience the views of lives that may or may not mirror their own. It asks people to consider the concepts of poverty, violence, abuse, depression, and racism to challenge these ideas of whom the people are that live in society's that tolerate these ideals and label people based on them. This point of view is expressed by one student in diary entry #5 which says, " I'm fourteen, and people think I should be scared because I'm surrounded by violence, but around here it's an everyday thing"( Page 12).
Life as defined in the forum of diary writing asserts that beliefs about other people are a result of life, observing, and simply by word of mouth. The students in at Wilson High categorize each member into society into racial and power groups and act accordingly upon that belief. That is to say these youth see the African American, Latina, Asian descent, and Caucasian persons who do not fit into their racial group as outsiders and typically as those they cannot meaningfully relate to in the initial stages of the diary entries.
Reading through the first passages of the diary entries, an understanding of the immense pressure of racial intolerance particularly among the young who are still developing the social constructs of life, which can at times be easily, swayed.
However; the basis for such intolerance and beliefs stem from the environment that the children were exposed to including the views of adults in positions of authority. For example, diary entry #54 states "I was in class looking over our reading list for the year, along with our essay assignments, when I noticed a saddening lack of diversity. I asked her why, and her response was "We don't read black literature in this class because it all has sex, fornication, drugs, and cussing" (Page 118). Other direct exposure of racism in the lives the students is seen as Ms. Gruwell takes her class to Washington D.C to visit the Holocaust Museum. Reflected in entry #83 the student recalls, "At that moment I felt as if I had entered a place were violence and hate did not exist. But in a few seconds that safe feeling would be all taken away. Damn! Check out this swastika, can you believe it? Just blocks away from the White House and the Holocaust Museum" (Page 166). Throughout the course of this book, the views of the students' slowly and appreciatively change as their experience changes.
That is as they engage others of different ethnic backgrounds, including Mrs. Gruwell, though reading, discussion and active participation. Able to engage in such activities has allowed the Freedom Writers truly become free.
One of the most effective methods of introducing new concepts to her students was the use of guest speakers. One such speaker included Zlata Filipovic, a young girl who had survived war torn Kosovo to author her own novel about her experiences therein. One student writes in entry #47, "I never thought that a person who lived over 10, 000 miles away could impact me, but tonight, that changed. Zlata has been with us for four days now and we've really gotten to know her well and she's just like us." Further while speaking in front of a large audience including The Freedom Writers, Zlata is asked whether her ethnicity was Croatian, Muslin or Serbian? She promptly and simply replies, "I am a human being" (Pages 92, 93).
As the desire to read and absorb the experiences of others persists in her students, so Ms. Gruwell arranges for another speaker to discuss her incredible relationship with a girl named Anne Frank. Having already read the novel, The Diary of Anne Frank which tells the powerful story of this young girl, the students were eager for the visit. One recollection of this visitor reflects of their speaker Gerda Siefer, a Holocaust survivor herself, "Like Anne, she is Jewish and was born in Poland, and didn't meet Hitler's standards of purity either. She was forced to live in a basement where she could barely stand up. It amazed me how I could not only emphasize not only with Anne Frank, but also with a Holocaust survivor" (Page 84).
The purpose of this book I believe was to share the voices of her students. It suggests that people live and see life from personal experience and in particular, young developing minds are strongly affected by that in life. Further, we see from reading this book that although negative experiences can create false impressions and negative outlooks, that the power to change achieve and move forward with a positive outlook can also be developed over time. I highly recommend this book. Giving the authors the ability to be heard by their own words, gave them the courage to seek out more positive solutions to very negative situations.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Comment: I watched the movie first (which was really good), and, as usual, the book was that much better. It's heartwarming, not the warm fuzzy type of heartwarming, but the real book about real people overcoming real situations type of heartwarming. The human spirit never ceases to amaze me, and these kids really soar. I highly, highly recommend this book.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Straight from the front line of urban America, the inspiring story of one fiercely determined teacher and her remarkable students.
As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk” students. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust—only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the “Freedom Writers” in homage to the civil rights activists “The Freedom Riders.”
With funds raised by a “Read-a-thon for Tolerance,” they arranged for Miep Gies, the courageous Dutch woman who sheltered the Frank family, to visit them in California, where she declared that Erin Gruwell’s students were “the real heroes.” Their efforts have paid off spectacularly, both in terms of recognition—appearances on “Prime Time Live” and “All Things Considered,” coverage in People magazine, a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley—and educationally. All 150 Freedom Writers have graduated from high school and are now attending college.
With powerful entries from the students’ own diaries and a narrative text by Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary is an uplifting, unforgettable example of how hard work, courage, and the spirit of determination changed the lives of a teacher and her students.
The authors’ proceeds from this book will be donated to The Tolerance Education Foundation, an organization set up to pay for the Freedom Writers’ college tuition. Erin Gruwell is now a visiting professor at California State University, Long Beach, where some of her students are Freedom Writers.
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