Contextual Summary
Prior to this scene, Paco tried to shoot Grant, but accidently shot Sindy’s friend. As a result, Sindy’s friend died at the liquor store. After the shooting, Mrs. Gruwell’s classroom tenses even more, especially between Eva and Sindy. Despite the negative learning environment, Tito draws a Black man with fat lips and a big mouth and passes it around the classroom. Shocked with the picture drawn by Tito, Mrs. Gruwell provokes students by telling them they are amateur gangs who think they are something. She acts like she understands the students’ situation. Marcus is upset by his teacher’s comments and yells, “You don’t know nothing, homegirl” (Freedom Writers, 31:47). The whole class …show more content…
The whole class say that they are in the war with each other and they die with respect. Mrs. Gruwell does not agree with this and tells her class what the reality is. She tells them that they will not be remembered as nothing but a gangster after they die. At the end of the scene, Tito raises his hand and asks what Holocaust is. Shocked with Tito’s question, Mrs. Gruwell asks the class if anyone knows what Holocaust is, and only one student raises his hand. Then, she asks the class if anyone has been shot in the past, and almost everyone in the class raises their hand. She gets shocked at the reality of students living in the …show more content…
Gruwell tries to use First Dimension of multicultural education. The first dimension is “content integration” (Banks, 1998, p. 1). An example of content integration is integration of all subjects into one. Mrs. Gruwell tries to integrate history into language arts. She tried to connect the history of the Holocaust to the students’ current situation to get them interested in the learning. However, the teacher was not aware of students’ previous knowledge. She was not able to build on students’ previous knowledge because most of the students did not know what the Holocaust is. She tried to achieve safe-learning environment by getting rid of racial injustice in the classroom through the content integration. Unfortunately, it did not work because the students did not have the particular previous