From the movie Freedom Writers.

It’s a movie to watch more than once. The first time I saw it on television, the film had already started, but its plot caught my attention. And the second time that I could see it from the beginning. It’s about a new teacher on campus with a group of students who were not interested in studying and none of the teachers cared about their behavior.

I’m not going to speak from a racist point of view but from the point of view of the ignorance that existed in the entire student group. The teacher noticed that the students who were assigned to her classroom just wanted her to teach her class and leave. She of course had the goal of her students being concerned about learning... thus began a struggle between the knowledge and intelligence of the teacher and the reluctance and/or background of the students not wanting to study.

The movie is from 2007. The role of the new literature teacher is played by Hilary Swank and her name in the movie is Erin Gruwell, she’s married to Patrick Dempsey (in the movie) who has the role of Scott Casey, in the role of the Teacher Coordinator is of Imelda Stanton who plays Magaret Campbell.

The teacher is also young and must fight on the campus against two sides; apart from the apathy of the students, in relation to studying, the gentle and unprofessional behavior of the educators who were already settled in their comfort zone, they didn't care if the students studied or not and just considered them gang members who wanted to waste their time at school.

It begins a plot based on the real life of an educator determined to get to know each student individually to motivate them and make them know that their best weapon in life is knowledge.

She had to fight against a system designed against student aggregation, in a campus where it was a matter of beginning to integrate the colored race, with the Orientals, with the Westerners, with the different religious topics that surround each culture. Also, in those times the gangs of different segregated groups were those that governed both the interior of the campus and the surroundings of the lives of the students.

Each group was considered different and better than the others for being different and they acted with hatred towards others, regardless of the fact that they were of the same age and with the same level of knowledge. They simply attacked each other at the slightest gesture of opinion contrary to those of each of the groups.

The teacher looked for the common point that they all had. Cleverly poking around the form to find information about them, she got each one to make a presentation about their personal lives. They were to read their diaries in the classroom and one by one they read it. She had managed to integrate most of them since each one felt in the same condition as the others, the difference being that they were in different groups. They were finally equal in their own eyes, or at least some were less hostile with each other and those from different religious groups or from different nations.

The educator brings them the diary of Anne Frank, who was a young Jewish woman who wrote her diary while suffering the disasters of the Holocaust. Mrs Miep Gies generously, regardless of her own life, helps her and her family, as well as many other Jews, to escape the sufferings of being captive to the Nazis.

She was discovered and still tried to continue helping the Anne Frank family.

Her heroic act was a flame of hope in the non-integrationist thinking of the group of students. Somehow making everyone feel integrated and identified with Mrs. Miep Gies in her way of acting. And it leads them to continue writing about their lives and their achievements, always with the support of their teacher who stayed with them until they graduated.

The method that this teacher used is so impressive that several of her students were the first to graduate in their entire generation. They all left the gangs where they belonged until then. They all learned to respect each other. Being different, they considered themselves the same and formed a single family. Their own stories served as an example to take their lives to other schools that also fought for student integration.

It's a great story that I recommend reading.