freedom writers

Director: richard lagravenese

Actor: hilary swank,imelda staunton,patrick dempsey,scott glenn

Data Published: Fri Jan 05 2007

Genres: Biography,Crime,Drama

Key Words: teacher,f rated,based on real person,female teacher,teacher as protagonist

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463998/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Writers

Description: Freedom Writers is a movie starring Hilary Swank, Imelda Staunton, and Patrick Dempsey. A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves and pursue education beyond high school.

Plot: In 1994, in Long Beach, California, Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) has been accepted to teach English for at-risk students at Woodrow Wilson High School, a once highly acclaimed school, but racial tensions have increased since the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. Erin struggles to connect to her students and she experiences numerous fights between some students, who are in rival gangs. One night, Eva Benitez (April L. Hernandez), her boyfriend, and a friend go to a convenience store. Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan), a Cambodian refugee, frequents the same convenience store. Grant Rice (Armand Jones), an African-American student at Woodrow Wilson, frustrated at losing an arcade game, demands a refund from the store owner. As Grant storms out of the store, Eva's boyfriend, Paco (as retaliation for losing a fight against Grant that took place earlier during a gang fight at Woodrow Wilson), attempts a drive-by shooting to kill Grant, but misses accidentally killing Sindy's boyfriend. As a witness, Eva must testify at court; she intends to guard "her own" in her testimony. At school, Gruwell intercepts a racist drawing by one of her high school students and utilizes it to teach them about the Holocaust, most of which have no knowledge of. 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 high school students, Gruwell takes on two part-time jobs to pay for more books and spends a lot more time at school, much to the disappointment of her husband (Patrick Dempsey). Her students start to behave with respect and discover a lot more. A transformation is specifically visible in one student, Marcus (Jason Finn). Gruwell invites various Jewish Holocaust survivors to talk with her class about their experiences and requires the students to attend a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Meanwhile, her unique training methods are scorned by her colleagues and department chair Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton). The following school year comes, and Gruwell teaches her class (now sophomores) again, making it the second year that she is their teacher. On the first day of semester, Gruwell makes her class do a "Toast for Change", allowing everyone to open up about their struggles and what they wish to change about themselves. Later on, the class makes enough money to have Miep Gies to arrive to the United States and tell her experience when she helped Anne Frank, her family, and the Van Pels hide from the Nazis; she then also persuades to the students that they are heroes and that they "within their own small ways, [can] turn on a small light in a dark room." These two events inspire Eva to break free of the demands of her father to always protect her own rather than tell the truth. At Grant's trial, she shocks the courtroom by revealing that Paco actually killed Sindy's boyfriend in the store; Grant is spared of being convicted and Sindy later forgives Eva. On leaving the court, Eva is attacked and threatened but ultimately spared by members of her gang and ends up going to live with her aunt in order to keep herself safe. 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. Gruwell fights this decision, eventually convincing the superintendent to permit her to teach her kids' junior and senior year, much to their elation. The film ends with a note that Gruwell successfully prepared numerous high school students to graduate high school and attend college, for many the first in their families to do so.