Educator Helps "Unteachable" Students Pursue College

Ramon Enriquez (left) joined his former teacher Erin Gruwell on stage at the NASSP Convention to talk about his experiences in her classroom that led to his pursuit of a career in education.

In her first year as a teacher, Erin Gruwell found that her students felt abandoned by the education system and that they were not interested in her curriculum. Her roster of 150 students included many who had struggled with violence, abuse, the loss of a family member, and learning disabilities, and others in the school deemed some of her students "unteachable."

Refusing to accept the notion that these students could not be taught, Gruwell realized that to engage her students she would need to abandon her planned curriculum and design one that spoke more directly to the students and their reality — which one student had described as "living in an undeclared war zone."

Instead of traditional texts, such as The Odyssey, Gruwell changed her curriculum to include texts that illustrated man's inhumanity to man along with stories of hope and possibility. The strategy paid off when all 150 of her original students graduated from high school and pursued college careers.

During the Opening General Session of the 2005 NASSP Convention, the former Long Beach (CA) Unified School District English teacher captivated attendees with stories of struggle and student triumph in an urban school of 4,500. Gruwell began by encouraging those in attendance to think past all of the rhetoric currently surrounding education and remember the reasons why they became educators in the first place.

To reinforce her message, one of Gruwell's former students, Ramon Enriquez joined her on stage to discuss his experiences and the lessons he learned. He expressed admiration and appreciation for those in the room. "I have learned two things about leadership: There are good leaders that do things right, and there are great leaders who do the right thing," he said.

Enriquez, who had spent the majority of his academic career strongly disliking school, will graduate from college this year and plans to pursue a career in education.

Gruwell and her students chronicled their journey in The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them.