Freedom Writers Part II: Junior and Senior Year

This is an amazing book. I've learned so much from their experiences and got some great ideas for when I teach. There were a few things that stuck out to me the most in this last half. The first was that we need to make sure we have multicultural literature in our units. I know when I went to high school, rarely did I ever have to read a book written from someone from a different culture. Most were from white, American, or European authors. Only in college did this expand for me. Students miss out on a lot and from what I got from the book, it marginalizes students and invites racism and prejudice.

Something that I thought was horrible was also from Diary 54 where the teacher always called on the student for an "African American opinion." I haven't had this happen to me, but I have seen it happen to others. It was embarrassing and fustrating. When teachers do this, they are stereotyping people, and isn't part of the point of an education is to try to erase this type of behavior? And if you label students a certain way for too long, they start to believe it themselves. Such as the "bad" student, the "dumb" student, the "smart" student, etc... That is a lot of pressure to put on a person and usually ends up negatively.

One of the last things I loved about this book is how Ms. Gruwell publish this book. She took the students' work and made a finish product for them, and on top of that, they helped with the publicity, did they interviews, and they got the credit and awards. How easy it would have been for Ms. Gruwell to take all the credit for what happened, but she didn't. It makes me think what I might do for my classes. Instead of just writing a paper, make a class magazine or book with all the students' work bound in it and include it in the class's library or even plan an event or something based off of what they learned.

I love this book and I will probably read it a few more times. This is definitely going into my text set because it fits the unit I'm focusing on, which is "The American Dream." What a great representation on what students can do in order to rise above where they are at?