Now to focus on the educators, people that play a humoungous role in founding this movement. Erin Gruwell has formed the foundation and also formed a Freedom Writers Institute that teachers can apply to attend to understand what Erin Gruwell does and how she so strongly impacts a classroom. This application is reviewed by many boards and you will be sent a packet if you are invited to attend.
If you are interested in applying see this site:
Here are some testimonials from teachers from Nebraska that have attended the Freedom Writers Institute:
“I have experienced firsthand the effects that this training has had on my students. Now they are fully engaged in school and have learned to respect others as well as themselves. But, most important of all, they have what I was taught to teach: Hope!”
Cedric Cooper, Omaha, Nebraska
“When I walked into my first teaching job in an urban midwest high school in January, 2009, I was the seventh teacher my students had seen for sophomore English that year. They were unmotivated, apathetic, and way behind.
Eight days into my assignment, a counselor visited my classroom. One of my students had been shot and killed in a jewelry store the night before.
I knew I needed the Freedom Writers’ stories. We put away the anthologies and spent the next few weeks reading, grieving, and sharing stories. The students connected with the text in a way I could not have imagined: gangsters brought to tears, the most resistant kids stealing the book to take home.
As a result of The Freedom Writers Diary and Freedom Writers methodology, my students realized I wasn’t just another filler teacher. They knew I cared about them because I taught to their interests and wasn’t afraid to teach about life.
I was overjoyed to attend the Freedom Writers Institute, which only deepened my beliefs in teaching to kids’ hearts, as well as their minds. I was connected with other professionals who know that teaching is not just an intellectual undertaking but one of the heart. I was validated in my beliefs and have since presented at district workshops and faculty development in order to ‘teach one to teach another.’”
Kerri Molczyk, Omaha, Nebraska
These teachers have changed children’s’ lives by attending this institute and they are starting a new foundation of teaching for our children today. How could those testimonies not be inspiring?
*Information taken from Freedom Writers Foundation Website.
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