Ivonne Cervantes-draft-freedom writers

The movie freedom writers is a based upon the diary of Erin Gruwell’s students.The diary held the experiences of each students life and how they survived each day in the real world.All her students were involved in a gang in some type of way.They are seen as the troubled teenagers,also how Erin faced her struggles and fought to be the best teacher and make a change in these students life.It shows how the students also overcome their own obstacles in their lives and the way their lives changes drastically.The students come from the streets and have only been taught to protect their own kind of ethnicity against another.In the classroom they were all separated from one race from another thats how they keep from fighting each other.The students were seen as dumb, violent gang bangers who could never learn and had no potential in life.They never had someone to care for what the outcome of their future was nor did they ever plan to graduate high school because they had no one look up to.

So in the film Erin who is played by Hilary Swank when she takes her first step in the classroom the students didn’t even bother to pay attention and ignored her.At that moment she realized it was going to take more motivation to encourage the students into her lessons.When she went home at night to her husband Scott played by Patrick Dempsey she talk to him about her class and how she wanted to help them more than anyone has ever done.She had to first put her self in their shoes and relate to them.Erin goes back to classroom with more energy to encourage the students to participate by using things they can relate to.She struggles to get the administrators to help provide materials for her classroom so she had to provide them her self and work two other jobs besides being a teacher.She fought to prove everyone wrong because she knew her students could change it was just a matter of time.

Throughout the movie it shows the stories of each student and how they came to be in the violent world they call home.Among the stories is that of Eva played by April Lee Hernandez, whose voice is among the first we hear in the film. Throughout the film we see flashbacks and snapshot scenes of the present, Eva’s young life unfolds with crushing predictability. From when she is 9-year-old watching as her cousin is gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Later her father is arrested; she’s initiated into a gang. One day, while walking with a friend under the glorious California sun, a couple of guys pull up in a car and start firing in their direction. Eva has to embraces violence because she knows nothing else and she hates everyone, including her white teacher, because no one has ever given her a reason not to.

In time Eva stops hating Erin, though the bullets keep coming. It’s a hard journey for both women, one that includes other students, most of whom are played by actors who look too old for their roles and are nonetheless very affecting. None of the actors are big named actors, but two who show good intentions are Mario the singer, who plays an angry drug dealer named Andre, and Jason Finn, whose big, soft, moon face swells with fury and vulnerability as a homeless teenager named Marcus.

The journey is a bumpy ride for Erin and her students,she fights the discouragement from other and her troubled relationship with her husband,the students faced the challenging phase of change.The movie is a drama,heart warmed film that will leave you wanting to be able to change someone elses life.

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