News & Events
New Road School of Somerset Revisits “Freedom Road”
September 07, 2007
New Road School of Somerset Revisits “Freedom Road”
Every time an opportunity arises for teachers to “plug in” to the beat that their students step to, it should be embraced and utilized. When working with students with particular individual challenges, it becomes an even more precious opportunity.
In California, first year teacher Erin Gruwell provided her students with journals in which they were required to write daily diary entries. They could choose to have her read them or not. The majority chose to share, and thus began a phenomenal learning experience.
When Erin Gruwell established an “out of the box” way to reach and teach her class of at-risk students, she led many of us in the field of education down a path less taken … a “new road”, so to speak.
By encouraging her students to look inside of themselves to find good and then look into others for the same, she changed them, herself, and many young people and instructors who read the diaries written by her class. In those pages, students recognized themselves and the commonality of man.
Together, Ms. Gruwell’s class read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “Zlata’s Diary”, written by a young girl whose life was turned up-side down by the war in Sarajevo. The students recognized similarities between the prejudices suffered by these young women and the prejudices that they were facing in their own lives.
This past fall, Mrs. Hadley and Ms. Seymour’s class at New Road School of Somerset, read the Freedom Writers’ Diaries as a group literature project. In doing so, they grew as a class, as individuals and as humanitarians. Upon the book’s completion, the class composed letters to the group of young students that had opened up and shared, thanking them for broadening their perspective and opening their hearts to teach them that old values can be taught in new ways.
We thought it would be worth sharing some of our students’ letters and a poem with you!
