Galloway, N.J. – Almost 20 years ago, Erin Gruwell — a then-brand-new teacher assigned to a high-risk English class at a southern California high school — picked up a roll of electrical tape and told her students to form two separate groups.

She rolled out a line of green tape and told her students that they would play a game rather than continue their lesson. The game started with her asking them questions, and the students answered by either standing on the line in affirmation or staying where they were in rejection.

The rowdy students laughed when asked about buying Snoop Dogg’s album or seeing the movie “Boyz in the Hood,” but they grew quiet when the questions and statements hit closer to home.

“How many of you know where to get drugs right now?”

“How many of you know someone in a gang?”

“Stand on the line if you’ve lost a friend to gang violence. How about two? More than three?”

As the students exchanged looks with each other across the tape, they realized that the simple game Gruwell created revealed the barriers and challenges that they each faced in their journey to academic success. This forced them to not only be kinder to each other but also to understand what Gruwell wanted them to understand all along: their stories are more alike than different, and they all deserve to be told.  

“At that moment, I realized that every one of these kids, even though they have these tough shells, I just have to try to crack them,” Gruwell said. “I have to give them the opportunity to share their stories. Yes, Shakespeare will come, but right now, I want them to be the storytellers.”

Little did the students and Gruwell know at the time that this game — in addition to other aspects of her teaching, such as required daily journaling for self-reflection and a trip to the Museum of Tolerance — would become the basis of a collaborative book that later became immortalized in the 2007 film “Freedom Writers.” 

Gruwell has since founded a foundation that tries to recreate the magic that sparked her students’ imaginations in classrooms across the nation through training, outreach, scholarship, and curriculum development. On Wednesday, April 24, she visited Stockton University to learn more about the School of Education, meet with students in the Education program and tour the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center.

She was particularly interested in the initiatives that the School of Education has hosted to foster more diversity in teaching and education, including 2023’s Future Teachers of Color Conference. Gruwell looks forward to supporting the next generation of teachers and educators in “writing what needs to be written,” as she and her students did in the 1990s.

“We enjoyed a really intimate couple of hours with future educators, and I hope that some of the ideas that I shared about my journey don’t talk anybody out of this noble profession that I am so incredibly proud of. I’m so excited that many of the folks in this room right now want to and plan to become teachers,” Gruwell said to the audience of about 100 students.

In addition to answering students' questions, Gruwell spent the presentation bringing the stories of the Freedom Writers — who just recently celebrated their 20th anniversary with a new edition of their book, “The Freedom Writers Diary” — to life through clips from their documentary. Stockton students got to hear from the actual students whose lives were changed by a young Gruwell brandishing tape and composition notebooks. 

As Carlos — “Tito” in the film — got vulnerable about how Gruwell’s lesson on the Holocaust impacted him and how he viewed his classmates, Gruwell talked about how she was able to see him transform from a houseless and troubled teenager on the constant search for food and a place to sleep to a man, mentor and leader in his community through the beginnings of her social-emotional curriculum.

It is her hope that stories of transformation like this can continue through future educators equipping their students with the tools and resources to tell their own stories. 

One of those future educators, student Therese Reidy, was moved by Gruwell’s visit.

“What an experience this was for anyone not only studying Education but Literature or Holocaust and Genocide Studies, as well. Meeting, talking, and interacting with Erin was a surreal moment and is an experience I will always think back to when I think of my time at Stockton University,” Reidy of Woodbine said.

Another student, Atlantic City native LaRissa Sykes, succinctly summarized her feelings in one sentence: “Erin has inspired me to keep fighting for my dream of being a teacher to make a difference in children's lives.”

Education Professor Meg White thanked Gruwell for taking the time to talk to her students.

“At my first job in higher education, I walked into the dean’s office, and she told me, ‘Your job as a teacher is to take the students from where they are and make them better,’” White said after Gruwell’s closing remarks. “I just want to thank you because everybody who has crossed your path today was taken from where they are and made better by you.” 

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– Story by Loukaia Taylor

– Photos by Lizzie Nealis