Okay, I'm excited about my little trip down memory lane. Let me tell you why!
I’ve been seeing this movie publicized on billboards and bus stops, and I thought it was interesting… I didn’t really get the storyline until I started seeing commercials. When I learned more, I also connected it with Dangerous Minds, and saw it as a cliché.
When I heard the commercials, I kept hearing the name Erin Gruwell in the clips and previews, and I knew it sounded familiar. But I didn’t know from where. Tonight, one of my best friends from high school asked me if I wanted to see it, and told me that it was about our high school. THAT GOT MY ATTENTION! That’s when her name rang a bell. LOL! Ms. Gruwell was in her last year as an English teacher at Wilson when I was just coming in as a freshman.
[RedBlackDelta, my little sister is currently a freshman at Poly! Ugh, Jackrabbits…lol. j/k, I’m a PROUD BRUIN! LOL!
]
Ms. Gruwell left a lasting impression at Wilson. The movie did an excellent job of telling her story. It was very accurate, as far as the segregation, her teaching strategies, and ignorance of some of the faculty and administration. I’ll never forget that I FOUGHT long and hard to get into Distinguished Scholars, I was the only black student in many of my AP and Honors classes, and yet I still only graduated with honors. They always found a way to create new rules or “alterations” to the curriculum. My friends and I fought the same battle. Some succeeded, some didn’t. Some had parents to take teachers to court, some students protested, some didn't bother to try and just settled for whatever, etc. etc. But that’s another story. I love my alma mater, but I was glad to finally graduate.
The school isn’t as wild as they made it out to be. I didn’t like how they exaggerated the quad scene. Things were not prim and proper, but it wasn’t that extreme. Long Beach is rough, but I think somethings were a little "extra". I guess that's show buisness. The students did have a lot of crazy things going on at home, but a lot of people do.
I’m calling my former English teacher tomorrow! She was one of my most inspirational mentors throughout high school. We met when I was a freshman and she was planning a trip to UCI to see Dr. Maya Angelou, for the JRs and SRs only. I charmed my way into getting added to the list.
I had her for AP English Language in my Jr year, and enjoyed her class so much, that I decided that I would make more progress in her Honors Multicultural Literature for my senior year, instead of AP English Lit. with another teacher. She always told us stories of Ms. Gruwell, and used a lot of her teaching styles. We did the journal exercise, played similar games whcih were more like icebreakers into another lesson, and she even took us to meet a Holocaust survivor. That teacher was hard core. We had homework before we even stepped in her class, within the first week of classes, we had a test on the three books we had to read during the summer and the vocabulary words she gave us to study. She would come in on the weekends and have study sessions, she scheduled AP review sessions outside of class time, kept an open door policy, and we named our homework nights after her. LOL! We had so many vocabulary words (I felt a little overwhelmed when I got the list), timed essays for homework, along with reading assignments and projects that went along with them. That was all in addition to the work we had in class! LOL! She gave us the most homework I’ve ever had in my life, and every second in her classroom was productive. She dared anyone to walk into her classroom late. LOL! You had to be one brave soldior to do that. When I completed her class, I was confident with my writing, and felt prepared for college. This movie brought back a lot of memories for me!