When she begins to teach her class about the history of ethnic violence around the world, focusing on the stories of Anne Frank in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and Zlata Filipović in contemporary war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina, her students find themselves identifying with these young girls’ experiences as expressed in their diaries. Gruwell chooses literary works that reflect the students’ realities. In order to make her students more attuned to the similarities they share as a class and to feel engaged with schoolwork, Ms. These divisions reflect the gangs’ separation according to ethnicity and reveal the fact that, for many of these students, the choice to remain within the confines of their own ethnic group is an issue of life and death, aimed at ensuring their survival in the “hood” where racially based violence is a constant threat. She also is forced to address the stark ethnic rivalries that divides the classroom, as students form groups according to their appearance, separating into Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, and whites. She becomes aware that her primary objective will be to instill self-confidence in these so-called “rejects” who have been abandoned by most of the adults around them, including, often, their very own parents. The next year, she is assigned a new group of students: freshmen who have been labeled “at risk,” “unteachable,” and whom no one else wants. As a result, she decides to use this incident as a teaching opportunity inspiring her to focus her curriculum on the issue of tolerance. However, she soon discovers that most of her students do not know what the Holocaust is. Gruwell intercepts this drawing, she loses her temper, telling her students that such stereotyping leads to horrific events such as the Holocaust. However, she is soon confronted to the reality of racial tensions when one of her students produces a racist caricature of Sharaud, an African-American student, depicting him with large, protruding lips. While the school itself is not in a dangerous neighborhood, many of the students who attend it come from environments marked by gang violence and drug trafficking.ĭuring her first year as a student teacher, Erin attempts to create a color- and ethnicity-blind environment in the classroom.
She hopes to help young people deal with their pent-up anger in non-violent ways and thus chooses to teach at a school known for its ethnic and socio-economic diversity.
These riots shook the entire region, heightening racial tensions in the area and convincing a young woman, Erin Gruwell, to devote herself to teaching. In 1992, officers from the Los Angeles Police Department were acquitted after brutally beating Rodney King, an unarmed black man, and the court’s decision was soon followed by six days of violent rioting, as members of the African-American community expressed their long-standing frustration with the discrimination and abuse they suffer at the hands of the police. During this period, racial tensions are at an all-time high. In 1994, Erin Gruwell begins her journey as an English teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California.
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