Freedom Writers Analysis

After reading through some documents from Eric Foner's Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History, Volume 1, Fifth Edition, I found two documentaries that really grabbed my attention. Ones that I can actually say I learned something from them. The first document would be from Giovanni da Verrazano when he encountered Native Americans in 1524 on page 4-8. The second document can be found on page 8-11 which is from Bartolome de las Casas on Spanish treatment of the Indians, from History of the Indies back in 1528. Both these documents brought some attention to me that I did not know.

The movie “Freedom Writers” is based on a true story. Hilary Swank as Erin Gruwell plays an inspirational teacher at Wilson High School. She is ready to take on the teaching world as she steps inside Wilson High School for her first day. Her class, varied with teenagers of different ethnic backgrounds, wants nothing more than to just get through the day. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, gang members, and much more are from poor neighborhoods, that all share a similar hatred for each other. On the first day of teaching she is very scared and unsure, but she knows she has to stop the racism in the class as well as their attitude towards life. Despite her students' persistent refusal to participate

The film is set in the year 1959 in a Vermont boarding school named Welton Academy. This academy is a very strict all boys school that demands the most out of every student so that they are completely ready for university. The term that this takes place in welcomes a new English teacher, Mr. John Keating who attended Welton himself, and follows the transfer student Todd Anderson whose brother was one of Welton’s finest students. Todd’s roommate is Neil Perry, who comes from a middle-class family that made multiple sacrifices to put him into Welton. Neil’s father is extremely strict with his son and dictates his schooling and extracurricular activities. Friends of Neil, and later Todd, include Charlie Dalton the rambunctious one, Knox Overstreet the romantic, the very smart ones Steven Meeks and Richard Cameron, and Gerald Pitts. The movie follows the seven friends through the school term starting with how strict and very stressful the courses and teachers are then showing the drastic difference of Mr. Keating. The movie remains on the lives of the boys, mainly focusing on Keating’s class and how he wishes for his students to become free thinkers which leads to many different issues with the friends.

“Freedom Writers” is a powerful film that is based on a true story about a teacher named Erin Gruwell, who struggles to connect with her students to make them believe that they can succeed in life, and to show them that their lives, experiences, and knowledge is valuable, all while attempting to unify them and to overcome racial segregation and gang violence that is part of their daily lives. Gruwell focuses on introducing the concepts of discipline and obedience in her classroom. 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; Gruwell refers to the composition books as “The Freedom Writers Diary.”

Freedom Writers is a movie based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary by teacher Erin Gruwell. The movie was directed by Richard LaGravenese and it was released in 2007. This movie discusses significant themes such as stereotyping and racial discrimination but most important the power of tolerance and understanding. The purpose of this movie is to promote the message that knowledge is power and in a world filled with disparities where hundreds of ethnic groups convey and interact humans are obliged to accept and tolerate the differences that define each person. This film is a perfect example of how these rhetorical components are used to create an effective argument. The director of the movie as well as the characters build their

In the 1920s, when movies were a brand new concept, people went to see the pictures in order to escape from their lives. In these movies, everything worked out in the end and they depicted happy, perfect lives. As the Depression raged on, movies were a distraction from the wear and tear of normal life. With the movie Freedom Writers, however, that is not the case. Freedom Writers tells the impossibly true story of a first-year teacher, Erin Gruwell, and the difficulties she faced in her classroom of supposed hopeless cases. In Long Beach, California, her students dealt with gang violence, drugs, and racism in their everyday lives. They lived in constant fear. The movie emphasizes how Gruwell wrestles with the public school system, motivates her students to learn, and changes their lives in the process. Directed by Richard LaGravenese, it came out in 2007 with stars such as Hilary Swank, Patrick Dempsey, and April Hernandez gracing the screen (IMDb). In contrast to the early movies, Freedom Writers deals with issues that are still a problem today, such as a focus on the majority instead of helping students who need extra assistance or encouragement.

Eva’s soliloquy- “you can’t go against you own people, your own blood.” - Symbolism of conformity.

In the Freedom Writers there were challenges that they had to overcome including the inequalities of students at Wilson High School. These inequalities ranged from skin color, background, grades, and age. We try to keep this from happening at OHS, but it can come out in some ways even here. This isn’t what we want to happen since it divides us as students and as a school, but it is almost impossible to keep from happening especially at a school as large as OHS.

In chapter, five there are several points. However the biggest points are if the colonists should be independent from Britain, the colonists reaction to the laws and acts made by the British Empire, and the rights of the colonists. These points summarize the contents of chapter five of “Voices of Freedom” and “Give Me Liberty”. The articles in voices of freedom that are arguing the primary points the first article is the “Virginia Resolutions on the Stamp Act (1765)”. This article is about Virginia’s House of Burgesses making resolutions to defend their liberty they decided to approve four of these resolutions and rejected three. The next article is “New York Workingmen Demand a Voice in the Revolutionary Struggle (1770)”. This article is

The film “Freedom Writers” by Richard LaGravenese has been successful in terms of expressing the emotions of students through their diaries but also engaging the audience emotions through the characters’ gang experiences. The character of Mrs Gruwell(Mrs G) is a teacher of low performing students trying to achieve their goals against all odds. Techniques the director used to show this include flashbacks, non-diegetic sound, spot light and pan shots which are all important in sending the message to the audience that family problems and violence have a big impact on the students lives.

In the movie, The Freedom Writers Mrs. Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank) plays a role of a dedicated teacher who did all she could, to help her students learn to respect themselves and each other. She has little idea of what she's getting into when she volunteers to be an English teacher at a newly integrated high school in Long Beach, California. Her students were divided along racial lines and had few aspirations beyond basic survival. Mrs. Gruwell was faced with a big challenge when a group of freshmen students showed her nothing but disrespect which made it hard for her to communicate, teach and understand them. However, Erin Gruwell was determined that no matter the cost she would teach her students not only

The class textbook, written by Eric Foner, starts out by talking about Reconstruction, focusing on freedom and what it entails. Looking at two Voices of Freedom, one is called “From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865) (Foner, 450). The other one is called “From a Sharecropping Contract (1866) (Foner, 451). Both of these articles are based off of land and sharecropping. The petition that was presented to Andrew Johnson of the right to obtain land should have been passed because slaves got the short end of the stick when it came to ownership of land and other rights.

A perfect example of a movie that demonstrates how poverty and feelings of oppression affect school violence is “Freedom Writers.” In this movie a 23 year old teacher named Erin Gruwell (Hilary swank) takes on the challenge of teaching at a school full of students brought up in gangs. These students had been written off by their school as hopeless cases but she tried to change that and get through to them by buying them new books such as Anne Frank and believing in them.

The film “Freedom Writers” is a film produced in 2007 and directed by Richard LaGravenese. The film is based on a book which was written by Erin Gruwell, who was a teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Eastside, Long Beach, California. The book was first published in 1999.

So this assignment is a first, I’ve never had a professor ask us to type for five minutes with a covered screen… I have nothing so far when it comes to writing about Quindlin, all I can think about is the move Freedom Writers, and because that is a pretty good movie that I feel is underrated a lot of the time. I think writing without purpose is really easy, just sitting here typing random thoughts that come to mind first, or perhaps words or even just doing this “haojdoaohfoahfo” and banging away at the key board is in some odd way sort of oddly satisfying, I guess you can say it is therapeutic because I just vent and get all this stuff out even if there is no purpose. I think this is a point Quindlin was making that in the move Freedom Writers, it worked well for Ms. G to give this students journals to write about their daily lives versus just assigning them to read and write something so specific is in some way made it more