The Freedom Writers Diary Themes

The students at Wilson High School are used to navigating racial and ethnic divisions. The rivalry between black, Asian, and Latino gangs affect their everyday lives, constantly making them potential victims in a war where only external appearances and group loyalty matter. As a consequence, at school and in their neighborhood, students learn to remain within the confines of their own identity group. However, when Ms. Gruwell begins to teach her class about the historical…

While Wilson High School assigns Ms. Gruwell a group of students that have already been labeled “unteachable” by the rest of the school staff, the new teacher soon discovers that her students are far from a hopeless cause. Instead, these adolescents are merely the reflection of the low expectations that adults have imposed on them all their life. To make her students feel more engaged in academic life, Ms. Gruwell adopts a teaching method in…

Violence and death are so present in many of Ms. Gruwell’s students’ lives that, when they read about Anne Frank and Zlata Filipović’s experiences in war-torn countries, many of them feel that they, too, are suffering from an undeclared war—one made of domestic abuse and gang violence, where death can strike at any moment. Through Ms. Gruwell’s teaching, though, students become empowered about their capacity to break the cycle of violence. Inspired by…