WEBVTT

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When I was a little girl,
I would sit at the dinner table

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and revel in my father telling stories
about the civil rights [movement].

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And I have an active imagination,
so I just envisioned my father

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at all of those strategic places:

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walking across that bridge in Selma,

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sitting at those lunch counters,

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standing on the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial.

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I even envisioned my father burning bras
during the women's movement.

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I don't know whose bras he was burning,

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but it was very exciting to see
my father out fighting the good fight.

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But as I got a little older, and my father
got a little more successful,

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then suddenly the only handicap 
he seemed to revel

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was his golf score.

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The next thing I knew
we were living in a gated community,

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my father was driving
a convertible Mercedes,

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and so I decided that if I wanted
to fight the good fight

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and go off to college, that maybe I
would do so standing in front of a judge.

NOTE Paragraph

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I went off to college, and as I was
pursuing law, there was this moment,

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this moment in time when I turned
to my television, like so many folks,

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and I saw this young man
standing in front of a tank

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in Tiananmen Square.

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And I'll never forget that moment.

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He stood there, so resolute
and so passionate.

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And it was so much bigger than him,

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whether it was about democracy
or freedom or education.

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As I fixated on that moment, I realized
I wanted to stand up for something.

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When I thought about
my cleats or my pompons,

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or that tiara, even those Greek letters,

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I realized I'd never
stood up for anything.

NOTE Paragraph

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So at that moment, I decided
that I wanted to be a teacher.

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And I remember calling my father,
and he didn't take the news so well.

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He quickly reminded me
that teachers don't make any money,

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which is true.

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He also told me that I would never
afford a home in Newport Beach,

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which is still true to this day.

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But no matter how cynical my father
was about my "new-chosen profession,"

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I thought, "It's bigger
than a dollar or a paycheck."

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It's like that "Aha!" moment.

NOTE Paragraph

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Well, shortly after I made
that decision to stand up,

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I turned on my television again
and watched the Los Angeles riots unfold,

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and I remember seeing the faces
of young kids who were so angry,

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and justifiably -

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kids who had their back against the wall,

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kids who didn't have a voice,

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kids who'd reach for their fists
or a spray can or, worse yet,

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reach for a Molotov cocktail
and destroy something.

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So I had another epiphany.

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At that moment I realized
I not only wanted to teach,

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but I wanted to teach those kids.

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Once again, I picked up the phone,
I called my father on the golf course,

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and he made all kinds of cynical jokes,
the most important was,

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"No matter what you do,
please don't eat the apples,"

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because he convinced himself they're laced
with strychnine or razor blades.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I'm going to tell you
about my first day on the job.

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I wore the exact same dress that Julia
Roberts wore in the film "Pretty Woman."

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I had polka dots; I had pearls.

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And as I was about to leave my house

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and make that 45-minute drive
down Pacific Coast Highway

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in my convertible white Rabbit,

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I started thinking about
all of those great stories I'd read

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in the literary canon -

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stories by Homer, stories by Shakespeare.

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And as I made that drive,

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I wondered what kind of stories
I was going to read with my students.

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But they had a story of their own.

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Because I quickly found out,

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in their city, shortly after
the Los Angeles riots,

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there were 126 murders -

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126.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I walked into my classroom -

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there were no textbooks,
there was no technology,

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and I looked at students
who were miserable.

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Students at the age of 14
who were told they were going to fail

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and drop out of school by the end
of their 9th-grade year.

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Students who desperately
believed that they'd be behind bars

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by the time they were 16.

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And worse yet, students who believed

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they would be six feet under
by the time they turned 18.

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My students had never read
a book from cover to cover,

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nor did they intend to.

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They hated reading,

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they hated writing,

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and the only thing that seemed to bring
them together in perfect harmony

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was they really hated me -

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this perky, annoying person
with my polka dots and my pearls.

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And if you don't believe me,
I'd like to show you a brief clip

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to show you what that first day was like

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and what my students
thought of their teacher,

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this cheerleader from hell.

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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(Video) (Background music) Student #1:
Looking around at them,

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it was like looking at nothing

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because I didn't care.

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Student #2: A lot of students
were just bad, you know?

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And I didn't expect Erin 
to try to teach us anything.

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I knew that she was nothing more
than a babysitter.

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Erin Gruwell: It was very evident
that they didn't want to be there.

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I could walk into my classroom
and I could tell who was pissed off,

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who's jaded, who's hungry, who's bored,

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who can't wait to get out of here,
who hates my guts.

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It's easy to be perceptive
and to be in the moment,

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but to be in the moment
you have to be vulnerable.

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I had to walk in there
and not have a guard up.

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Student #1: I think
that anybody in that situation,

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you've got be scared out of your mind,

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you have to be scared out of your mind.

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Have to be.

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Have to be.

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Because not only
are you dealing with people

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that don't care that you're a teacher,

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they don't care about you.

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It's personal.

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(Background music ends)

NOTE Paragraph

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(On stage) EG: It's personal.

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So, looking at these students,

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I realized, "How can I get them 
to put down their fist,

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to put down that spray can,
or worse yet, put down that gun?"

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Because in my classroom I had students
who just came from juvenile hall,

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had ankle monitors around their legs,

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and a probation officer.

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Students who just came from rehab
for crystal meth or crack cocaine.

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Students who bounced around
from foster home to group home to shelter.

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Students who would never
turn in their homework

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or have their parents bake me brownies,

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and if they did,
I probably shouldn't eat them.

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And most of my students could care less
about these dead white guys in tights.

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Dead white guys in tights
like togas or Shakespeare.

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And so what I tried to do was to figure
out, "How can I teach my students

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that they have a story,
because we all have a story?"

NOTE Paragraph

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So I decided that we were
going to play a game

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that was anything but a game.

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And I was going to simply put this piece
of tape down the center of my floor

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and ask my students questions.

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And hopefully that line
could be a gravitational pull.

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And as my students
would stand on that line,

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I would know where they stood,
I would know their story.

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As the questions began,

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I believe that 150 kids who walked
into my classroom at the age of 14,

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all of them were poor.

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In fact, all of them knew
in the pit of their stomach

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what it felt like to not know
where that next meal was coming from,

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to be so proud that they didn't want
to turn in that meal ticket at school.

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All of them knew
what it felt like to go home,

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and the lights had been turned off again.

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There's no food in that fridge again.

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And those hardworking single moms
with those cockroaches and those roaches

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were never going to get ahead.

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Most of my students knew
what it felt like to be homeless,

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to be picked on.

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Most of them knew what it felt like
to want to end it all,

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to stand on the ledge,
to put a razor blade to your wrist,

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to look at those pills.

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Most of my students had been
bullied or were the "bullier."

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Most of my students had visited somebody
in juvenile hall or jail or prison,

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or themselves had been there.

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But the most disturbing question
that I asked my students

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was if they'd ever lost somebody.

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And as student after student
stood on the line,

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I realized, "That is our story."

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Because to be 14 and to go
through your entire life

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feeling like you have
a bull's-eye on your chest,

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to be 14 and to look over your shoulder

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and wonder and wish,
"Am I going to make it home today"

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to see that hardworking
single mom again?

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To be 14 and to be numb
and anesthetized to your future?

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So I wanted to teach
my students to have a voice.

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And maybe they couldn't change
the cast of characters they were dealt,

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but maybe if "the pen
was mightier than the sword,"

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maybe, just maybe,
they could rewrite their own ending.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I decided that we were going
to have a toast,

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"a toast for change."

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And maybe it didn't matter

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that most of my students had been kicked
out of every school they ever attended.

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Maybe it didn't matter
that my students had a 0.5 GPA.

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Starting right then, starting right now,

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we were going pick up a plastic champagne
glass filled with sparkling apple cider,

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and we were going to wipe
that slate clean.

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The first young woman who picked up
that plastic champagne glass

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got very serious.

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And her change wasn't
about a number 2 pencil.

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Her change wasn't about a test

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or student scores or data or statistics.

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She picked up that plastic champagne glass
at the age of 14, and she simply said,

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"I don't want to be pregnant
by the time I turn 15, like my mama,

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and I don't want to spend the rest
of my life behind bars, like my daddy,

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and I don't want to be six feet under
by the time I turn 18, like my cousin.

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I want to change."

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And in that moment of vulnerability,

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and in that moment of being exposed

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in front of a room
full of her so-called enemies,

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it gave every other kid the opportunity
to pick up a plastic champagne glass

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and dare to dream and to dream big.

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Young boys were tired
of being told to act like a man

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when there was no man in their house
to show them or to guide them.

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Young boys were tired of sitting
on the edge of their bed

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"on this Christmas" or "this birthday,"
waiting for their deadbeat dad

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to show up and bring them a present
or tell them they love them.

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And they never showed up.

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Beautiful young girls were tired
of being touched in places they knew

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they weren't supposed to be touched.

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And people touching them
had names like "Uncle Joe."

NOTE Paragraph

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And as each and every student
picked up that plastic champagne glass

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and talked about change,

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I handed them a journal.

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And the idea was, "Go back,
go back to wherever you feel safe,

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and write, and own it.

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And maybe these words
will make you immortal.

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And together we're going to read
stories about other kids

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who've written their words down.

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Kids who come from undeclared wars -

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or declared.

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Little girls in tiny little attics

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who will look out her window
and watch her friends

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being led off like sheep to slaughter.

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And she owned it.

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Every day, that little girl
Anne Frank wrote her story.

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Or young boys like Elie Wiesel,

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who was crammed into a cattle car,
rode into Auschwitz-Birkenau,

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watched his entire family
perish in a chimney.

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But he wrote about it.

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Or courageous little girls
in places like Bosnia-Herzegovina,

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who watched her friends
being picked off by snipers,

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and yet every day she too wrote about it."

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So my students
started writing their story.

NOTE Paragraph

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And in doing so, we started
sending these letters off

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like these messages in a bottle.

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Maybe someone will listen to us.

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Maybe our cries won't fall on deaf ears.

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Maybe these icons will come and see us,

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150 gangsters.

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And they came.

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The woman who helped Anne Frank
in that tiny, little attic,

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this simple secretary,

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got 150 letters,

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and she hopped on a plane, even though
there were typos and grammar mistakes,

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to give homage to my students
and their story.

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Schindler's survivors who walked
across those railroad tracks

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leading into Auschwitz-Birkenau -

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they too got letters from my students.

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They too came.

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Bosnian refugees came to our classroom.
and looked at my students -

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who could care less about
the color of their skin,

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the side of the street they came from,

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or, more importantly,
what their parents did or didn't do.

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They came.

NOTE Paragraph

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And then one day
my students got really cocky,

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and they said, "You know, Miss G, we keep
sending these letters out into the world,

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and all of these icons come into room 203,

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and they share their world with us.

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It's time that we take
our world out there."

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My students wanted to go on a field trip.

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They wanted to go to Washington, D.C.

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They wanted to follow in the footsteps 
of these civil rights activists,

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the Freedom Riders, who got on buses
and stopped at every depot

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and drank out of those drinking fountains,
sat at those counters,

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and sat on that bus,
no matter where they wanted to sit.

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For those of you who have
never dealt with teenagers,

00:12:48.992 --> 00:12:51.995
the idea of taking 150 students
to Washington, D.C.,

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all I could think about
was "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll."

00:12:55.928 --> 00:12:59.468
And in the pit of my stomach,
I knew that I had 150 students

00:12:59.521 --> 00:13:01.632
who lived below the poverty line.

00:13:01.649 --> 00:13:03.696
So they didn't have
the luxury of going home

00:13:03.696 --> 00:13:05.660
and talking to that
hardworking single mom

00:13:05.660 --> 00:13:08.170
and asking her to pull out her Visa,

00:13:08.170 --> 00:13:10.980
or convincing her to write that check,

00:13:11.003 --> 00:13:13.922
or even to go to the ATM
and get that crisp $20 bill,

00:13:13.922 --> 00:13:15.856
because if they had that $20 bill,

00:13:15.856 --> 00:13:17.594
that should go for lights,

00:13:17.594 --> 00:13:19.911
that should go for food in that fridge.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:20.364 --> 00:13:23.395
So I told my students,
"You have to figure out a way.

00:13:23.395 --> 00:13:26.352
If we're going to get
from point A to point B,

00:13:26.449 --> 00:13:28.625
if we're going to take this journey,

00:13:28.625 --> 00:13:30.598
you have to figure it out."

00:13:30.601 --> 00:13:32.551
And as we began to fundraise,

00:13:32.551 --> 00:13:35.412
one of my students put me on the spot,
like all kids will do,

00:13:35.412 --> 00:13:39.069
and he said, "Miss G, what happens
if we raise all of this money,

00:13:39.245 --> 00:13:41.285
and we don't make it there?"

00:13:41.345 --> 00:13:44.410
And at that moment I thought,
"We're not going to make it there."

00:13:44.410 --> 00:13:46.375
So like a deer in the headlights, I said,

00:13:46.375 --> 00:13:49.778
"If we raise all this money and don't make
our way to Washington, D.C.,

00:13:49.998 --> 00:13:51.911
we can buy some more books.

00:13:52.035 --> 00:13:55.219
Maybe we can take a field trip
to the Museum of Tolerance.

00:13:55.716 --> 00:13:57.507
Maybe we can have a pizza party,

00:13:57.507 --> 00:14:00.540
so in that case it's a win-win
because we did it together."

00:14:00.750 --> 00:14:05.103
But then I stopped myself and to this day
I don't know how and I don't know why,

00:14:05.647 --> 00:14:08.655
but I said, "But if we do make
that chic trip,

00:14:08.715 --> 00:14:10.675
and we do raise that money,

00:14:11.005 --> 00:14:13.940
your lives will never be the same."

00:14:14.210 --> 00:14:15.631
And they did.

00:14:15.874 --> 00:14:19.117
So, for a brief moment,
I'd like to show you our field trip,

00:14:19.117 --> 00:14:23.851
when 150 kids put down a fist,
put down a gun,

00:14:24.279 --> 00:14:27.124
picked up a pen, and wrote their story,

00:14:27.412 --> 00:14:31.612
and took their words,
their story to our nation's capital.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:31.796 --> 00:14:35.101
(Video) (Background music) Student #3:
Somebody came up with this idea

00:14:35.101 --> 00:14:39.357
that we should honor all of our friends
who had been lost to senseless deaths.

00:14:40.905 --> 00:14:45.441
Student #4: So we wrote names
of people we lost in our lives on pins,

00:14:45.441 --> 00:14:49.195
and we were wearing them as a symbol
of that their spirit is still alive.

00:14:49.203 --> 00:14:51.919
You know, they're still with us,
they're still part of us.

00:14:54.936 --> 00:14:57.326
Student #5: We all held hands,

00:14:58.179 --> 00:15:01.459
and we left the hotel holding hands.

00:15:04.703 --> 00:15:09.001
Student #6: We took a walk
to the Washington Memorial,

00:15:10.023 --> 00:15:12.092
and it was quite a ways

00:15:13.377 --> 00:15:17.377
and - there were 150 of us.

00:15:17.771 --> 00:15:19.308
And we didn't let go.

00:15:19.624 --> 00:15:23.184
Everybody started honking at us
and we just kept on walking.

00:15:24.113 --> 00:15:26.071
Student #7: The world just goes by

00:15:26.071 --> 00:15:28.729
and no one stops to look
at somebody in their face

00:15:28.748 --> 00:15:31.358
to actually look at them for who they are.

00:15:31.429 --> 00:15:34.219
And so we stopped traffic,

00:15:36.315 --> 00:15:40.612
and you could feel the presence
of this is something bigger than us.

00:15:46.782 --> 00:15:50.212
EG: I'll never forget this man rolled
down his window, very disgruntled,

00:15:50.212 --> 00:15:52.167
and he said, "What are you doing?"

00:15:52.167 --> 00:15:55.619
and one of the "Freedom Writers" said,
"We're changing the world."

00:16:02.104 --> 00:16:04.154
(Background music ends)

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:04.154 --> 00:16:06.831
(On stage) EG:
For a group of 150 students,

00:16:06.950 --> 00:16:10.355
change meant that they didn't have
to be like that mother

00:16:10.355 --> 00:16:12.164
who was strung out,

00:16:12.164 --> 00:16:14.352
or that deadbeat dad,

00:16:14.448 --> 00:16:16.818
that they could rewrite their own ending,

00:16:16.838 --> 00:16:20.608
that they could be the first
in their families to graduate,

00:16:20.951 --> 00:16:23.981
the first in their families
to go to college,

00:16:24.132 --> 00:16:27.202
the first in their families
to take these stories,

00:16:27.585 --> 00:16:29.393
to put them in a book,

00:16:29.425 --> 00:16:30.463
to send them off -

00:16:30.463 --> 00:16:32.773
once again, like a message in a bottle -

00:16:32.773 --> 00:16:35.973
and hope that those cries
didn't fall on deaf ears.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:36.719 --> 00:16:39.717
So I sent 150 copies
of my students' stories

00:16:39.717 --> 00:16:42.475
to every single publishing
house in our country.

00:16:42.525 --> 00:16:45.455
And every single one of them
rejected my students.

00:16:45.513 --> 00:16:48.303
Every single one, except one -

00:16:48.675 --> 00:16:50.795
the same publishing house
that took a chance

00:16:50.795 --> 00:16:53.847
on a little girl in a tiny, little attic.

00:16:54.250 --> 00:16:55.364
So it's as it should be

00:16:55.364 --> 00:16:58.508
that the publishing house
that published "The Diary of Anne Frank"

00:16:58.508 --> 00:17:03.178
decided to take a chance on 150 kids
and published their book.

00:17:03.807 --> 00:17:07.727
Would anybody read a book
written by and for and about kids?

00:17:08.347 --> 00:17:10.047
Apparently someone would

00:17:10.047 --> 00:17:14.102
because this little book became
the number one book in America.

00:17:14.626 --> 00:17:17.799
And I tell you that because
my students nicknamed this book

00:17:17.818 --> 00:17:19.708
"The Little Book that Could,"

00:17:19.754 --> 00:17:22.501
in honor of that train
going down those tracks,

00:17:22.501 --> 00:17:26.265
"I think I can, I think I can,
I think I can."

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:27.323 --> 00:17:31.173
I stand in front of you
as an ordinary teacher

00:17:31.421 --> 00:17:34.041
who had an extraordinary experience.

00:17:34.332 --> 00:17:37.672
And even though I haven't
quite mustered up the courage

00:17:37.805 --> 00:17:41.225
to stand in front of a tank in any square,

00:17:41.488 --> 00:17:45.678
or like my students, stand
and stop traffic by myself,

00:17:46.073 --> 00:17:49.823
I did muster up the courage
to stand in front of you today,

00:17:50.321 --> 00:17:53.341
and so I hope that,
standing in front of you,

00:17:53.381 --> 00:17:55.181
when you see me,

00:17:55.280 --> 00:17:57.060
you see my kids.

00:17:57.453 --> 00:17:58.933
When you hear me,

00:17:58.933 --> 00:18:00.697
you hear their cries.

00:18:01.128 --> 00:18:04.118
And when a beautiful Holocaust survivor
challenged my students,

00:18:04.118 --> 00:18:08.143
and she said, "Evil prevails
when good people do nothing,"

00:18:08.170 --> 00:18:09.780
I stand before you,

00:18:09.780 --> 00:18:12.548
challenging each and everyone of you,

00:18:12.548 --> 00:18:15.201
each and everyone of you
who is a good person,

00:18:15.201 --> 00:18:16.660
to do something.

00:18:16.738 --> 00:18:19.860
Don't let those cries fall on deaf ears.

00:18:19.860 --> 00:18:21.720
Don't turn the other cheek.

00:18:21.720 --> 00:18:23.017
Do something.

00:18:23.017 --> 00:18:25.367
Do something for a kid in need.

00:18:25.532 --> 00:18:27.012
Thank you.

00:18:27.065 --> 00:18:30.045
(Applause)