freedom writers movie assignment

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Freedom Writers

• A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves and pursue education beyond high school.
• It's 1994 in Long Beach, California. Idealistic Erin Gruwell is just starting her first teaching job, that as freshman and sophomore English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School, which, two years earlier, implemented a voluntary integration program. For many of the existing teachers, the integration has ruined the school, whose previously stellar academic standing has been replaced with many students who will be lucky to graduate or even be literate. Despite choosing the school on purpose because of its integration program, Erin is unprepared for the nature of her classroom, whose students live by generations of strict moral codes of protecting their own at all cost. Many are in gangs and almost all know somebody that has been killed by gang violence. The Latinos hate the Cambodians who hate the blacks and so on. The only person the students hate more is Ms. Gruwell. It isn't until Erin holds an unsanctioned discussion about a recent drive-by shooting death that she fully begins to understand what she's up against. And it isn't until she provides an assignment of writing a daily journal - which will be not graded, and will remain unread by her unless they so choose - that the students begin to open up to her. As Erin tries harder and harder to have resources provided to teach properly (which often results in her needing to pay for them herself through working second and third jobs), she seems to face greater resistance, especially from her colleagues, such as Margaret Campbell, her section head, who lives by regulations and sees such resources as a waste, and Brian Gelford, who will protect his "priviledged" position of teaching the senior honors classes at all cost. Erin also finds that her teaching job is placing a strain on her marriage to Scott Casey, a man who seems to have lost his own idealistic way in life. — Huggo
• A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves and pursue education beyond high school. Woodrow Wilson High School is located in Long Beach, California. The school is voluntarily integrated, and it isn't working. The Asians, the blacks, the Latinos, and a very few whites not only don't get along but also stay within their cultural cliques and are part of protective and violent gangs. There isn't much teaching or learning going on at the school. It is a warehouse for young teenagers until they can drop out or are kicked out. — yusufpiskin
• The storyline of the movie takes place between 19921995, beginning with scenes from the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Hilary Swank plays the role of Erin Gruwell, a new, excited schoolteacher who leaves the safety of her hometown, Newport Beach, to teach at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, a formerly high achieving school which has recently had an integration program put in place. Her enthusiasm is quickly challenged when she realizes that her class are all "at-risk" students, also known as "unteachables", and not the eager students she was expecting. The students segregate themselves into racial groups in the classroom, fights break out, and eventually most of the students stop turning up to class. Not only does Gruwell meet opposition from her students, but she also has a hard time with her department head, who refuses to let her teach her students with books in case they get damaged and lost, and instead tells her to focus on teaching them discipline and obedience. One night, two students, Eva (April Lee Hernández), a Hispanic girl and narrator for much of the film, and a Cambodian refugee, Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan), find themselves in the same convenience store. Another student, Grant Rice (Armand Jones) is frustrated at losing an arcade game and demands a refund from the owner. When he storms out, Eva's boyfriend attempts a drive-by shooting, wanting to kill Grant but misses, accidentally killing Sindy's boyfriend. As Eva is a witness, she must testify at court; she intends to protect her own kind in her testimony. At school, Gruwell intercepts a racist drawing of one of her students and uses it to teach them about the Holocaust. She gradually begins to earn their trust and buys them composition books to record their diaries, in which they talk about their experiences of being abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted. Determined to reform her students, she takes two part-time jobs to pay for more books and spends more time at school, to the disappointment of her husband (Patrick Dempsey). Her students start to behave with respect and learn more. A transformation is especially visible in one of her students, Marcus (Jason Finn). She invites several Holocaust survivors to talk with her class about their experiences and takes them on a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Meanwhile, her unorthodox teaching methods are scorned by her colleagues and department chair Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton). The next year comes, and Gruwell teaches her class again for sophomore (second) year. In class, when reading The Diary of Anne Frank, they invite Miep Gies (Pat Carroll), the woman who sheltered Anne Frank from the German soldiers to talk to them. After they raise the money to bring her over, she tells them her experiences hiding Anne Frank. When Marcus tells her that she is his hero, she denies it, claiming she was merely doing the right thing. Her denial causes Eva to rethink lying during her testimony. When she testifies, she finally breaks down and tells the truth, much to some of her family members' dismay. Meanwhile, Gruwell asks her students to write their diaries in book form. She compiles the entries and names it The Freedom Writers Diary. Her husband divorces her and Margaret tells her she cannot teach her kids for their junior year. She fights this decision, eventually convincing the superintendent to allow her to teach her kids' junior and senior year. The film ends with a note that Gruwell successfully brought many of her students to graduation and college.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Education Inequality — Freedom Writers Movie Analysis

Freedom Writers Movie Analysis

• Categories: Education Inequality

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Words: 702 |

Published: Mar 20, 2024

Words: 702 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Racial tension, educational inequality, power of literature and writing.

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Freedom Writers Diary Movie Guide and Storytelling Assignment

Description

This two-part assignment/project can be used together or separately. The first part of the assignment is a movie guide for Freedom Writers Diary. In the movie, students observe how virtues are displayed differently depending on the characters' social locations. Students are asked to used high-level critical thinking skills including compare/contrast, change/continuity, and critiques of the film.

In part two, students are asked to consider their own story of becoming. Students choose how to tell their story: visual arts, poetry and short stories, music, videos, etc. Students consider the questions of virtue ethics (and the question posed to students in the film): Who am I becoming? What is my character and how is it developing?

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Teaching justice across subject areas.

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Warner Bros. Discovery Cooks Up New Serving of ‘Dinner & A Movie’ For TBS

By Brian Steinberg

Brian Steinberg

Senior TV Editor

• Warner Bros. Discovery Cooks Up New Serving of ‘Dinner & A Movie’ For TBS 1 day ago
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Jenny Mollen ’s and Jason Biggs ’ next date night will likely capture more attention than usual.

Popular on Variety

As such, there’s a lot of what made “Dinner” so digestible in the past. And maybe some other treats. Because of their show-business background — Biggs is best known for his role in the “American Pie” franchise and the Netflix series “Orange Is The New Black,” while Mollen has done films, written books and even filled in on “Live With Kelly and Mark” — this pair may bring extras to the “Dinner” feast.

“We have a lot of friends in movies,” says Mollen. “We have insights and backstory. What was going on during the shooting? That’s always fun to have.”

“Not fun is seeing a movie…”says Biggs

“..that you auditioned for…”  Mollen adds

This kind of back-and-forth fueled the original, and no one wants to deviate too much from the recipe. “It was a show, certainly for me, that was part of the cultural zeitgeist,” says Biggs.

Except there may be a little more spice. Biggs and Mollen don’t get to leave their quips on the set. “We really go there,” says Mollen. “It’s our authentic relationship. We get in fights. We come back. We bicker. We banter. It’s real and I think that’s the fun of it.”

Paul Gilmartin knows what that’s like. The comedian was one of the original co-hosts, along with Annabelle Gurwtich and chef Claude Mann, and stayed with “Dinner” until the kitchen closed for good. He says the program took on a life all its own with viewers. That’s largely because the team was left alone to shape the show without much interference. He and Gurwitch made sure they were commenting on the exact scene viewers saw just before the break, and spent hours figuring out jokes and sketches that might require a fast trip to a clothing store as the team waited for the food to look just right.

“For that first year, we felt like we were on Public Access TV,” Gilmartin recalls. “The network wasn’t even giving us notes or saying anything. There was a tremendous amount of freedom.”

Similar concepts were sprouting up across the set-top box as a growing pack of still-nascent TV networks scrambled to fill their schedules. USA, well before it was owned by NBCUniversal, ran hours of “Up All Night,” a format that had Rhonda Shear or Gilbert Gottfried chatting about B-movies after midnight. Joe Bob Briggs led “MonsterVision,” a collection of sci fi and horror films on TNT. And Comedy Central gained notice for “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” a clever show that had two robots and a stranded space traveler make fun of silly old sci-fi films.

Such stuff flourished in cable’s early era and fizzled out as the upstarts became more corporate. Gilmartin says he and his on-air cohorts had less screen time as TBS doled out more product placements in the series. “By the end, it felt like we were limping along. Our creative time was down to 30, 40 seconds,” he recalls. “It was a shell of itself. But in its heyday it was really fun, and I loved the people I worked with.”

 Neither Biggs nor Mollen are strangers to hosting. The pair did a stint on a game show for Lifetime called “My Partner Knows Best,” and Biggs has in recent years tried his hand at leading “Cherries Wild:” for Fox and “Cash At Your Door” for E! “It looks so easy, but in fact it’s incredibly difficult,” he says.

In one new episode, the pair host a viewing of “We’re the Millers,” and get ready to feast on Mexican themed cuisine. Mollen asks Biggs if he’d rather be with Jenifer Aniston than her, and Mark L. Young, an actor who plays a small but pivotal role in the film, pays a visit and reveals Adam Driver was once considered for his part. Mollen and Biggs are a team, but one that that is built on its members occasionally pushing back on one another.

“We definitely have our issues,” says Mollen, “but we always bring chemistry.”

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