Freedom Writing and Growing Up

I have recently discovered... really looked into the Freedom Writers. If you haven't heard the amazing story, it's about a teacher who receives the worst group of students possible... the unwanted students. Students whose realities are built on racial war.

She taught to make a difference. She united them, helped them overcome their adversity... more like guided them. She didn't do it... they did it themselves. Many of them graduated high school and went to college, being the first in their families.

It was really awesome. I just finished her memoire, "Teach With Your Heart," and watched the movie, "Freedom Writers." It is truly inspiring.

I hope I can make difference like that.

What she did was not simple, though it may seem like that. She found them where they were, and brought them from there. She found what would speak to their lives, and taught them with that. She used stories from the Holocaust, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Sarajevo/Bosnia to help relate to the kids' own war-torn lives.

Not only did she transform the kids' lives, she transformed her community. It was after the Rodney King riots, and the community felt so much racial tension. She took the kids on a field trip from Long Beach, a community torn by gang violence, to Newport Beach, a primarily white community, to see Schindler's List, and the residents freaked out. Lots of Neo-Nazis still lived in the area and threatened her.

A few years later, the community received the classroom with warmth. Their story was told all over the nation, and people were inspired.

After that class graduated, she started teaching a university, and now she is the founder and director of the Freedom Writer's Foundation, which serves as an organization to help teachers transform education.

I would like to not only transform education (and boy, does it need transformed!!), but I would like to transform lives.

I'm in a bit of a spot for this summer. I could stay at the Center for one more summer and work with kids and make a difference... or I can go home and work at a desk behind a computer all day long filling out paperwork and appease my parents.

I know what I want to do.

But... my family is so important, too...

God told Abraham to go, leave his father's household and go to where God was calling him... and I almost feel like I'm in that spot.

This spring will be the last of my origninal 3-5th grade girls. Half of our current group is fifth graders. I have been with them since they came in. I've invested so much into them, and I've watched some of them come over amazing hurdles. Not because of me, but I've been a part of it. This summer will mark their moving into the sixth grade. It's hard to watch them grow up and move on.

Now I know how it feels to have an empty nest. What am I going to do when I have my own kids?

The thing I loved most about the book was that she said she gave them a voice. Giving them a voice. Giving a voice to the voiceless.... speaking up for those who have no voice...