Tag: Freedom Writers.

This following is based  on an Evening Prayer service lead by Alliee DeArmond,  Friday, September 16,  2016 at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in Aptos, CA.  Alliee leads the Friday Evening Prayer services which start  promptly at 5:30 pm and end around 6:00 pm. Come to 125 Canterbury, Aptos, CA.

As part of the service,  Alliee discussed a book about the Freedom Writers and Erin Grunwell.

For information about  Evening Prayer  and other services:       http://www.st-john-aptos.org/

For information about Alliee DeArmond’s The Word Shop.  visit website.   

Included is how  another woman helped:  Miep Gies a Dutch woman …   

 

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 Erin  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 Erin ….  and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl  and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevos their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding.

Erin and her students …   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 Peoplemagazine, 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.