Erin Gruwell

Erin Gruwell is the founder of the Freedom Writers Foundation and the teacher whose transformative work with at-risk students inspired the bestselling book The Freedom Writers Diary and the movie Freedom Writers starring Hilary Swank. Her story has become one of the most powerful examples of what happens when one educator refuses to give up on students the system has written off.

The Teacher Who Changed Everything

Nothing prepared Gruwell for her first day teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, where her students were labeled unteachable and trapped in a cycle of gang violence, poverty, and low expectations. By using unconventional methods including the diaries of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic, she connected with her students and challenged them to tell their own stories. The result was a classroom transformation that defied every expectation and produced 150 students who graduated and went on to college.

A Movement That Continues to Change Lives

The Freedom Writers Foundation now trains educators worldwide in Gruwell’s methods, reaching thousands of teachers and millions of students. She has received numerous awards for her work in education and continues to advocate for at-risk youth. Her keynotes deliver deeply inspiring presentations on the power of education to transform lives, reaching students others have given up on, creating safe spaces for learning, and the belief that every student deserves a champion.

 Becoming A Catalyst For Change

Erin Gruwell helped 150 of her students – many of whom were written off by the education system – to use the power of education to write a book, graduate from high school and attend college. In her inspiring presentation, Gruwell tells the story of this extraordinary journey – from poverty and despair to hope and promise – with stops at Anne Frank’s House and Auschwitz and then on to Capitol Hill and Congress.

Erin challenged her students to overcome the seemingly insurmountable problems of poverty, racism, violence. How can we all become role models for tolerance, respect, and cooperation? Erin Gruwell teaches us all how we can become “Catalysts for Change.” 

Teaching Tolerance

In a scene from the hit movie Freedom Writers, a film based on Erin Gruwell’s experiences as an English teacher to inner-city Los Angeles youth, a Latino student is drawing a derogatory picture of a fellow black student. Intercepting the racial correspondence, Gruwell is reminded of a caricature she had seen from the Museum of Tolerance—Holocaust propaganda of a Jew made to look like a rat. Drawing parallels between her students’ ignorance and the prejudice of the Nazis, Gruwell captures the attention of her class by pointing out the seriousness of their actions and the implications that can follow.

In a through-provoking presentation, Gruwell explores the very situations that have led us towards conflict in the past and how tolerance and understanding could have prevented such negative outcomes. A true proponent that one person can make an extraordinary difference, Gruwell inspires us all to embrace the concept of changing lives by teaching tolerance. 

Nurturing the Leader Within