A Movie Analysis of Freedom Writers by Richard LaGravenese

Freedom Writers, a film directed by Richard LaGravenese and staring Hilary Swank, is a really inspirational drama in which Erin Gruwell, a very first year, freshman and sophomore class English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School, teaches her class about a lot more than just English, although studying about the troubled lives of her students. Mrs. Gruwell has to fight for her students’ interest in education meanwhile battling her pessimistic coworkers who have no need to greater the students. Despite the difficulties she faces and the consequences she faces, nothing dulls her spark to enhance the lives and mindsets of her freshman, and ultimately sophomore, English class.

All through the film, each and every main character does a lot of finding out, resulting in a lot of examples of distinct types of learning. At 1st, the students were very standoffish with Mrs. Gruwell. They hated her because she was white, and they had discovered to hate white individuals even so, when Mrs. Gruwell began putting much more work into assisting the students rather than just teaching them as any “normal” class, a handful of students started to reach out to her and accept the positivity and respect that she had to offer them. Most of the students nonetheless didn’t want anything to do with Mrs. Gruwell, but, by means of observational studying of watching their classmates, more and much more students started to warm up to Mrs. Gruwell and have respect for her till eventually all of the students looked up to her, and the whole class became a sort of family members. One more sort of finding out that was exhibited in Freedom Writers is operant conditioning. When the students have been offered the assignment to create a letter to Miep Gies, Mrs. Gruwell agreed to look into truly sending her the letters and the possibility of obtaining her visit the school to speak to them. Because of this reward incentive, the students in fact did their work and they learned that, by participating in the class and accomplishing their assignments, they would be rewarded. The students in Mrs. Gruwell’s class also learned by means of classical conditioning. All their lives, they had been conditioned to believe they had been significantly less than someone else and to think they had to turn to violence. In the scene where Tito draws the picture producing exciting of Jamal, Eva goes off, telling Mrs. Gruwell about how she was raised to hate white folks due to the fact of how they took her father away “just simply because they can.”

The character that learned the most throughout the film was Eva. In the beginning, Eva was incredibly against anyone. She only trusted herself and harbored sturdy hatred for anybody of a various race. Due to the hardships she faced all all through her life, she lived in worry. Nevertheless, by the end of the film, Eva had opened up to Mrs. Gruwell and the other students. By getting shown how not all folks are out to get her and that some men and women actually will help and help her out of the goodness of their hearts, she learned that she didn’t have to be so afraid and so filled with hate. She went from completely shutting everybody out to having open respect and trust for her peers. On the other side of the spectrum, the character who learned the least was Ms. Campbell, the head of the English division. All through the entire film, she had no hope for any of the students. She actively fought Mrs. Gruwell in attempts to hold the students back. She believed that they have been lost causes and that nobody could do something to teach them or alter them for the far better. Even to the finish of the movie, Ms. Campbell believed that there was no point in helping them the way Mrs. Gruwell was and fought to maintain her away from benefitting them by continuing to teach them in their junior and senior years. Mrs. Gruwell gave her a lot of opportunities to learn that the students could be helped and that there was far more to them than violence. She kept trying to get Ms. Campbell to use price range funds to actually teach them, and she kept refusing. Even when the students’ grades reflected what they had discovered, Ms. Campbell continued to have no faith in them. Despite Ms. Campbell’s disgusting pessimism, in 1 scene of the film, she does make a great point. She tells Mrs. Gruwell that “you can not make somebody want an education, the best you can do is get them to obey.” I do agree with her that you cannot force someone to want to discover, but you can get them to listen to you. The correct desire to discover can only come from intrinsic motivation however, just simply because somebody does not want to learn, it does not imply that you can’t get them to understand. It is feasible to force someone to obey sufficient to learn what you have to teach, but they nevertheless will not learn it on the very same level as somebody who really desires to learn.

In the identical way that Mrs. Gruwell was a accurate inspiration for her troubled students, my father is my greatest part model. Despite all of his setbacks in life, he was still in a position to fight his way to a wonderful point in his life where he can succeed a lot more than most folks. Growing up, he made a lot of blunders. He and my mom had me when they have been teenagers. My dad barely graduated from higher college and didn’t go to college and had to operate a “bottom-of-the-barrel” job. Now, eighteen years later, he has a higher paying job that offers him area to increase his position, a good house, the potential to do something he wants, and, on leading of it, he’s a great father. He is my biggest part model and inspiration to succeed. He taught me to push myself simply because, no matter exactly where you begin from, you can usually make it wherever you want to be if you just place your mind to it.