Freedom Writers and Stand and Deliver

            I viewed the films Freedom Writers and Stand and Deliver. These films are both about real life high school teachers who made a huge difference in their students’ lives.

            In the movie Freedom Writers, Erin Gruwell teaches freshman English at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. Erin is a young, white, first-year teacher. The events take place shortly after the riots of 1994. The students in Ms. Gruwell’s class refer to their situation as “war.” The groups of students (Latino, black, Cambodian) in her class all hate each other, and there is no tolerance for one another. The students are unmotivated to be at school or to do well in school mainly because of the politics that surround their lives outside of school. 

            Erin truly believes that she can help these students overcome their battles, both in and out of school. She had wanted to become a lawyer but realized by the time she would be defending the kids in court it was too late to help them. She wanted to be able to do something sooner, so she turned to the classroom. She believed that everyone has their own story. She encouraged her students to keep a journal and to write every day. The journal wouldn’t be graded or read unless the student gave permission. The journaling turned out to be a huge success because it gave the students a voice.

            Erin’s priority with these high schoolers was to teach them tolerance. She did this by playing the “line game,” which helped the students see that they have things in common with each other. They read about Anne Frank and Holocaust and visited the Holocaust Museum. The students become very interested in the subject and motivated to keep learning. They had dinner with Holocaust survivors and even raised money to have Ms. Geis, the woman who housed Anne Frank, visit their school. The class stayed together for the remainder of high school and Erin Gruwell certainly achieved her goal of teaching them about tolerance. The kids went from hating each other to thinking of one another as family. Erin helped her kids overcome many obstacles by keeping them motivated in class by reading about and talking about subjects that they could all relate to. She had faith in them, she had high expectations for them, and she respected them.

            Stand and Deliver features the story of Mr. Jaime Escalante, a Bolivian, middle-aged man, who goes to teach computer science at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, California in 1982. He ends up teaching Math 1-A to a group of Latino students who are unmotivated to be at school and who were previous met with low expectations in school. Mr. Escalante soon finds out that the school is in danger of losing accreditation, and they will need higher test scores to prevent this from happening. Mr. Escalante believes that all students will rise to the expectations that you give them and immediately turns his class around with this attitude. He respects his students and gains their respect in return. He is honest with them but jokes with them. He believes that Math can and will be their equalizer. Mr. Escalante tells his students that people will judge them by their name and complexion and will think they know less than they do. He holds the class to extremely high standards and gets results. The students respect what he is doing for them and genuinely want to succeed. He tells them all they need is “ganas,” the desire, to do it!

            Mr. Escalante’s main goal is to get his students to pass the AP Calculus test so they can receive college credit. His students commit to attending summer school, arriving to school early, taking his class two periods a day, staying late, and even coming to school on Saturdays. The commitment from these high schoolers shows how seriously they began to take their education. They desperately wanted to prove to others, and more importantly, themselves, that they could pass the AP test. Mr. Escalante worked his students incredibly hard, but they met and even exceed expectations. All 18 students that took the AP test passed. Unfortunately for the kids, their scores were questioned, and they were accused of cheating after some seemingly irregularities in their answers/scores. The students, however, agreed to retake the test and prove to everyone a second time just what they learned and were capable of doing. The beat the odds, and they all passed the AP test again.

            Both Freedom Writers and Stand and Deliver tell the story of great teaching methods. Both teachers meet their students with high expectations and the belief that they can achieve. They both treat their students with utmost respect and earn the respect from their students in return. The mutual respect is what really makes all the other events and successes possible. The students begin to believe in themselves and see themselves as valuable and intelligent. They prove to themselves and others that they are capable of great success and they even break down racial barriers. Erin Gruwell and Jaime Escalante are model teachers.