Self Motivation In Freedom Writers

Imagine, as an impressionable high school student, that your teachers do not care about your education or your well-being because of a label: “at-risk” or “unteachable”. This is an issue that many students have faced, and a few outstanding individual teachers have attempted to erase this label for the progression of these students’ lives. Freedom Writers, a movie that heavily involves this problem in education, is a 2007 movie directed by Richard LaGravenese and stars Hilary Swank, Scott Glenn, Imelda Staunton, and Patrick Dempsey (“Freedom Writers”). Based on the 1999 novel The Freedom Writers Diary, the book’s movie incarnation does an excellent job of portraying issues relevant to thousands of high school students during the time period. Erin Gruwell, played by Hilary Swank, is …show more content…
In the beginning, it is obvious to Miss Gruwell that teaching the students would be a challenge, considering that they self-segregate and practically refuse to cooperate. Evidence of this occurs on one of the first days of school, when a fight breaks out between students, and Gruwell calls for outside help to break it up. Even after the students reluctantly return to school after playing truant, they still do not respect Miss Gruwell and view her as an outsider who does not understand their plight. Furthermore, the students are painfully aware that the school officers believe they are merely a bunch of degenerates who will never amount to anything in life. This, coupled with the district superiors’ refusal to support Miss Gruwell’s teaching system, is rather unacceptable to the general public in the movie. In fact, the public would still find teachers who treat students as such inferior lowlifes as undesirable in schools. The only person who believed in the students was Miss Gruwell, and because of her encouraging, the students were motivated to find their own path in life and become successful in their