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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful and Inspiring..., March 15, 2007
This review is from: Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers (Hardcover)
This book, I believe, is a must-read for all teachers. It demonstrates the powerful and far-reaching influence of a teacher who made it her primary aim to nurture her students' ethical ideal and passionately dedicated herself to this aim. Our educational system has much to learn from Erin Gruwell and her students. If you are an educator, I highly recommend that you read this book. It will give you hope and inspire you to be a better teacher and human being.
I would like to respond to the two previous reviewers'critiques of Erin and her book.
First of all, studies have indicated that students do better when they stay with each other and with the same teacher (assuming the teacher is a caring one) for an extended period of time, the longer the better. Erin and her students must have recognized this truth and her example proved this hypothesis quite well. Secondly, so what if Erin only taught for four or five years? I speculate that the difference she made in the lives of her 150 students in those four years is more significant and lasting than the contribution some teachers make to their students in a 20 or 30-year long career. Erin is serving our society and our students on a larger scale by speaking and providing training to teachers on a methodology that yielded astounding success. I don't think she left teaching because she was "burned out". She was smart enough to know that she could serve the world more effectively in a different capacity.
And this one is to the reviewer who called Erin's book "self-serving and trite". Like you, I am sure all of us--as teachers--have spent our own money on our students and felt that every dime has been worthwhile. However, I don't know how many of us has actually worked a second or third job like Erin to cover our students' expenses. Erin is SELFLESS and anything but "self-serving". I am saddened that this extraordinary teacher has been so harshly criticized for what I consider an extraordinary act of love.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The BEST book on Education!, August 27, 2007
This review is from: Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers (Hardcover)
I read the Freedom Writer's Diary, watched the movie, and then read Erin Gruwell's "Teach with Your Heart." I have to say that, by far, this book is the best book I've read on an education related topic! Having taught High School students in California for 4 years and reading countless literature (journals, articles, newspaper, and books), this is one for the ages.
Erin Gruwell's passion, energy, and enthusiasm are extremely contagious. Her commitment to working with and caring for her students is what helped her earned her stripes and gain credibility, for they had become acustomed to being called "stupid" or "worthless" and being brushed off as problem children who many other teachers refused to teach.
The book chronicles her start in education with her student teaching stint, up until her Freedom Writers graduated from Wilson H.S. whereby she then went on to work for the University of California as a professor in the Education training program.
Imagine if each and every teacher emulated the qualities "Ms. G," as she is affectionately called by her former students, possess - what a change there would be in our educational outcomes and learning potentials!!
This is a book which reinforces the belief that every single person can make a difference in this world!
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32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Difficult to Replicate Encouraging Story., March 5, 2007
This review is from: Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers (Hardcover)
Erin Gruwell was a high school English teacher who slowly came to fame working with the "last chance" kids in her classroom she taught as a student teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. She eventually guided her students into writing their own stories which were eventually collected and edited to form the book THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY. The students that she taught are now known as The Freedom Writers and Gruwell has gone on to become a motivational speaker and the leader of a non-profit organization, The Freedom Writers Foundation. To be honest, I had never heard of Gruwell before until I saw the movie FREEDOM WRITERS. I am a high school English teacher myself and even though the film was full of clichés, it still touched me. As a teacher, I was more interested in learning about Gruwell and her story, rather than that of her students. That's why I bought and read a copy of TEACH WITH YOUR HEART.
Once Gruwell was able to capture the attention of her students and prove to them that she really cared for them, they were able to accomplish some amazing things together. They faced many challenges, the most difficult which seemed to be the usual bureaucratic red tape and school politics. Gruwell persisted and her students were able to overcome their own prejudices and racism and went on to lead better lives.
Stories like Gruwell and The Freedom Writers are encouraging and can be inspirational. In a field where the workers are underpayed, overworked, and underappreciated teachers need to hear more stories like this. Teaching is exciting and rewarding, but it can be incredibly draining, too. Reading about what Gruwell and her students were able to do and accomplish is an inspiration especially to educators, but also to everyone else.
However, readers should read the book knowing that Gruwell owes much of her success to either luck or the guiding hand of Providence. I don't doubt Gruwell's passion for her students. However, she got a lucky break early in her career. The turning point in her first classroom came when students were drawing inappropriate pictures of another student and Gruwell used these pictures as a catalyst to teach the students about the Holocaust, racism, and propaganda. This breakthrough led from one success to another. When reading about this, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if the teachable moment hadn't turned out they way it did. What if instead of becoming interested about the Holocaust the students started fighting and just stopped listening? How would things have been different? I believe after reading TEACH WITH YOUR HEART that Gruwell would have persisted until the end of the term, but she might have left the profession afterwards. She mentions how burned out and discouraged she was becoming. If the breakthrough had never come, would she have eventually given up and went back to law school? I raise these questions because I know there are dedicated teachers just like Gruwell who teach every day in classrooms similar to the ones she had who are never able to reach their students. They might touch their students' lives, but they never know it. No breakthrough moments ever happen in the classroom and yet, they persist in teaching despite the toll it takes upon their heart and soul. Teaching is a tough profession. You can devote yourself to your students, spending ungodly amounts of time, money, and effort upon them yet never seeing any results. I know because I've been there and I know there are many others. Then you read a story like TEACH WITH YOUR HEART and you remember why you started it all in the first place.
I enjoyed reading TEACH WITH YOUR HEART and found it to be encouraging. However, for student and beginning teachers, just realize that Gruwell's story is an unique one, one that cannot really be repeated no matter how diligent and dedicated you are to your students. You might never have a classroom situation that turns out the way Gruwell's did, but in reading the book you might just be reminded of why you became a teacher in the first place.
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