"They hated me. This perky, annoying teacher wearing polka dots and pearls"

When I talk about heroes, I talk about people such as Erin Gruwell. In 1994 a young teacher in Long Beach was assigned a class of low-performing high school students. 150 students from all kinds of ethnicities and gangs who couldn't care less about studying. All they cared about was hating each other. One boy in particular did everything he could to make Erin's life miserable. Until one day... when some other students in the class passed around a note they thought was funny. It was a drawing of that boy having extremly large lips. A reference to the fact that he was African American. Erin told the class that this was the type of caricature that the Nazis had used during the Holocaust to mock Jews and other people whose race was, according to the Nazis, the lowest form of spieces. When she realized that only one student knew what the Holocaust was, her way of teaching took a turn.

Erin understood that her students all had tragic pasts and gave them the opportunity to ventilate those life stories. She handed out journals in which they had to write somthing in every single day. Like a diary. It could be poems, songs... whatever. She didn't grade them and she didn't read them unless the students put them in a special cabinet at the end of the day. One of the girls in Erin's class was particulary angry at the world, but Erin persuaded her to get up in front of her class and tell her life story. Maria stood there in front of these people who she hated and told them about how she at 5 years old had been to more funerals than birthday parties.

Most of those students were poor and came from immigrant families who felt allinated because when trying to follow their dreams they kept getting knocked down. So they joined different gangs instead and started a war which was all about the color of their skin. They weren't really sure of what they were fighting for, all they could tell Erin was that they hated white people because they ruled the world. These kids knew from a very young age that they would always have to fight harder than white people to be successful. And that made them want to give up.

Erin gave them the opportunity to re-write their stories. It didn't have to end with prison or death. The past was in the past. And from now on they were going to celebrate every step they took forward, like reading a book from start to finish. Maria who had been hesitant in the beginning to read "The diary of Anne Frank" quickly felt a connection to that little girl. But once she had finished the book she threw it right across the classroom, furious that her teacher had not told her that Anne died. That little girl had given Maria hope, but if someone as good as Anne ended up dying, then how could a bad person like Maria ever have any hope for a good life? In that moment one of her classmates said "She did make it, Maria. Because she wrote about it. How many of our friends have died and we've never even read an obituary? But because Anne Frank wrote about it she is going to go on living even after her death".

The students decided to send their stories to the woman who had helped keeping Anne and her family hidden. And this little 87 year old lady travelled across the globe to meet them. She was someone who didn't care about their skin color, ethnicity or backgrounds. The kids treated her like she was royal.

Erin and her students made sure that this method of teaching would not be lost just because they graduated and went off to college. They released the book "The Freedom Writers Diary" and in 2007 Hilary Swank played the lead role in the movie, which was brilliant and you all need to see it. These days Erin is in charge of a program which gives teacher's the tools they need to do this exact same thing with their students. Go to http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org/ to check it out!