The Freedom Writers Diary shows how the students learn tolerance. In Diary 36, the student writes “’Why should I read books about people that don’t look like me? People that I don’t even know and that I’m not going to understand because they don’t understand me?’ I thought I was a smart-ass for asking her this question. I thought to myself, ‘She’s not going to give me an answer because this time I am right.’ She looked up and said very calmly, ‘How can you say that? You haven’t even bothered to open the front cover. Try it, you never know. The book may come to life before your very eyes’” (71). This quote shows how immediately this teenager wanted to judge this book. She didn’t even know what it was about. This same diary entry states in the next paragraph, “To my surprise, I proved myself wrong because the book indeed came to life. At the end of the book, I was so angry that Anne died, because as she was dying, a part of me was dying with her” (71). What this quote is saying is that this teenager read an amazing book about WWII and she didn’t want to read it when she first saw it. After reading this book, the writer learns more about the Holocaust and realizes the similarities she has with Anne Frank. Erin Gruwell is the educator who pushed this teenager to read this book and is responsible for this class. Mrs. Gruwell pushes a crowd of gangsters, thieves, and misfit students to become different and change the world. In her first Diary entry, she writes “I immediately threw out my meticulously planned lessons and made tolerance the core of my curriculum. From that moment on,
The Freedom Writers Diary shows how the students learn tolerance. In Diary 36, the student writes “’Why should I read books about people that don’t look like me? People that I don’t even know and that I’m not going to understand because they don’t understand me?’ I thought I was a smart-ass for asking her this question. I thought to myself, ‘She’s not going to give me an answer because this time I am right.’ She looked up and said very calmly, ‘How can you say that? You haven’t even bothered to open the front cover. Try it, you never know. The book may come to life before your very eyes’” (71). This quote shows how immediately this teenager wanted to judge this book. She didn’t even know what it was about. This same diary entry states in the next paragraph, “To my surprise, I proved myself wrong because the book indeed came to life. At the end of the book, I was so angry that Anne died, because as she was dying, a part of me was dying with her” (71). What this quote is saying is that this teenager read an amazing book about WWII and she didn’t want to read it when she first saw it. After reading this book, the writer learns more about the Holocaust and realizes the similarities she has with Anne Frank. Erin Gruwell is the educator who pushed this teenager to read this book and is responsible for this class. Mrs. Gruwell pushes a crowd of gangsters, thieves, and misfit students to become different and change the world. In her first Diary entry, she writes “I immediately threw out my meticulously planned lessons and made tolerance the core of my curriculum. From that moment on,