When I was a little girl, I would sit at the dinner table
and revel in my father telling stories about the civil rights [movement].
And I have an active imagination, so I just envisioned my father
at all of those strategic places:
walking across that bridge in Selma,
sitting at those lunch counters,
standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
I even envisioned my father burning bras during the women's movement.
I don't know whose bras he was burning,
but it was very exciting to see my father out fighting the good fight.
But as I got a little older, and my father got a little more successful,
then suddenly the only handicap he seemed to revel
was his golf score.
The next thing I knew we were living in a gated community,
my father was driving a convertible Mercedes,
and so I decided that if I wanted to fight the good fight
and go off to college, that maybe I would do so standing in front of a judge.
I went off to college, and as I was pursuing law, there was this moment,
this moment in time when I turned to my television, like so many folks,
and I saw this young man standing in front of a tank
in Tiananmen Square.
And I'll never forget that moment.
He stood there, so resolute and so passionate.
And it was so much bigger than him,
whether it was about democracy or freedom or education.
As I fixated on that moment, I realized I wanted to stand up for something.
When I thought about my cleats or my pompons,
or that tiara, even those Greek letters,
I realized I'd never stood up for anything.
So at that moment, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher.
And I remember calling my father, and he didn't take the news so well.
He quickly reminded me that teachers don't make any money,
which is true.
He also told me that I would never afford a home in Newport Beach,
which is still true to this day.
But no matter how cynical my father was about my "new-chosen profession,"
I thought, "It's bigger than a dollar or a paycheck."
It's like that "Aha!" moment.
Well, shortly after I made that decision to stand up,
I turned on my television again and watched the Los Angeles riots unfold,
and I remember seeing the faces of young kids who were so angry,
and justifiably -
kids who had their back against the wall,
kids who didn't have a voice,
kids who'd reach for their fists or a spray can or, worse yet,
reach for a Molotov cocktail and destroy something.
So I had another epiphany.
At that moment I realized I not only wanted to teach,
but I wanted to teach those kids.
Once again, I picked up the phone, I called my father on the golf course,
and he made all kinds of cynical jokes, the most important was,
"No matter what you do, please don't eat the apples,"
because he convinced himself they're laced with strychnine or razor blades.
So I'm going to tell you about my first day on the job.
I wore the exact same dress that Julia Roberts wore in the film "Pretty Woman."
I had polka dots; I had pearls.
And as I was about to leave my house
and make that 45-minute drive down Pacific Coast Highway
in my convertible white Rabbit,
I started thinking about all of those great stories I'd read
in the literary canon -
stories by Homer, stories by Shakespeare.
And as I made that drive,
I wondered what kind of stories I was going to read with my students.
But they had a story of their own.
Because I quickly found out,
in their city, shortly after the Los Angeles riots,
there were 126 murders -
126.
So I walked into my classroom -
there were no textbooks, there was no technology,
and I looked at students who were miserable.
Students at the age of 14 who were told they were going to fail
and drop out of school by the end of their 9th-grade year.
Students who desperately believed that they'd be behind bars
by the time they were 16.
And worse yet, students who believed
they would be six feet under by the time they turned 18.
My students had never read a book from cover to cover,
nor did they intend to.
They hated reading,
they hated writing,
and the only thing that seemed to bring them together in perfect harmony
was they really hated me -
this perky, annoying person with my polka dots and my pearls.
And if you don't believe me, I'd like to show you a brief clip
to show you what that first day was like
and what my students thought of their teacher,
this cheerleader from hell.
(Laughter)
(Video) (Background music) Student #1: Looking around at them,
it was like looking at nothing
because I didn't care.
Student #2: A lot of students were just bad, you know?
And I didn't expect Erin to try to teach us anything.
I knew that she was nothing more than a babysitter.
Erin Gruwell: It was very evident that they didn't want to be there.
I could walk into my classroom and I could tell who was pissed off,
who's jaded, who's hungry, who's bored,
who can't wait to get out of here, who hates my guts.
It's easy to be perceptive and to be in the moment,
but to be in the moment you have to be vulnerable.
I had to walk in there and not have a guard up.
Student #1: I think that anybody in that situation,
you've got be scared out of your mind,
you have to be scared out of your mind.
Have to be.
Because not only are you dealing with people
that don't care that you're a teacher,
they don't care about you.
It's personal.
(Background music ends)
(On stage) EG: It's personal.
So, looking at these students,
I realized, "How can I get them to put down their fist,
to put down that spray can, or worse yet, put down that gun?"
Because in my classroom I had students who just came from juvenile hall,
had ankle monitors around their legs,
and a probation officer.
Students who just came from rehab for crystal meth or crack cocaine.
Students who bounced around from foster home to group home to shelter.
Students who would never turn in their homework
or have their parents bake me brownies,
and if they did, I probably shouldn't eat them.
And most of my students could care less about these dead white guys in tights.
Dead white guys in tights like togas or Shakespeare.
And so what I tried to do was to figure out, "How can I teach my students
that they have a story, because we all have a story?"
So I decided that we were going to play a game
that was anything but a game.
And I was going to simply put this piece of tape down the center of my floor
and ask my students questions.
And hopefully that line could be a gravitational pull.
And as my students would stand on that line,
I would know where they stood, I would know their story.
As the questions began,
I believe that 150 kids who walked into my classroom at the age of 14,
all of them were poor.
In fact, all of them knew in the pit of their stomach
what it felt like to not know where that next meal was coming from,
to be so proud that they didn't want to turn in that meal ticket at school.
All of them knew what it felt like to go home,
and the lights had been turned off again.
There's no food in that fridge again.
And those hardworking single moms with those cockroaches and those roaches
were never going to get ahead.
Most of my students knew what it felt like to be homeless,
to be picked on.
Most of them knew what it felt like to want to end it all,
to stand on the ledge, to put a razor blade to your wrist,
to look at those pills.
Most of my students had been bullied or were the "bullier."
Most of my students had visited somebody in juvenile hall or jail or prison,
or themselves had been there.
But the most disturbing question that I asked my students
was if they'd ever lost somebody.
And as student after student stood on the line,
I realized, "That is our story."
Because to be 14 and to go through your entire life
feeling like you have a bull's-eye on your chest,
to be 14 and to look over your shoulder
and wonder and wish, "Am I going to make it home today"
to see that hardworking single mom again?
To be 14 and to be numb and anesthetized to your future?
So I wanted to teach my students to have a voice.
And maybe they couldn't change the cast of characters they were dealt,
but maybe if "the pen was mightier than the sword,"
maybe, just maybe, they could rewrite their own ending.
So I decided that we were going to have a toast,
"a toast for change."
And maybe it didn't matter
that most of my students had been kicked out of every school they ever attended.
Maybe it didn't matter that my students had a 0.5 GPA.
Starting right then, starting right now,
we were going pick up a plastic champagne glass filled with sparkling apple cider,
and we were going to wipe that slate clean.
The first young woman who picked up that plastic champagne glass
got very serious.
And her change wasn't about a number 2 pencil.
Her change wasn't about a test
or student scores or data or statistics.
She picked up that plastic champagne glass at the age of 14, and she simply said,
"I don't want to be pregnant by the time I turn 15, like my mama,
and I don't want to spend the rest of my life behind bars, like my daddy,
and I don't want to be six feet under by the time I turn 18, like my cousin.
I want to change."
And in that moment of vulnerability,
and in that moment of being exposed
in front of a room full of her so-called enemies,
it gave every other kid the opportunity to pick up a plastic champagne glass
and dare to dream and to dream big.
Young boys were tired of being told to act like a man
when there was no man in their house to show them or to guide them.
Young boys were tired of sitting on the edge of their bed
"on this Christmas" or "this birthday," waiting for their deadbeat dad
to show up and bring them a present or tell them they love them.
And they never showed up.
Beautiful young girls were tired of being touched in places they knew
they weren't supposed to be touched.
And people touching them had names like "Uncle Joe."
And as each and every student picked up that plastic champagne glass
and talked about change,
I handed them a journal.
And the idea was, "Go back, go back to wherever you feel safe,
and write, and own it.
And maybe these words will make you immortal.
And together we're going to read stories about other kids
who've written their words down.
Kids who come from undeclared wars -
or declared.
Little girls in tiny little attics
who will look out her window and watch her friends
being led off like sheep to slaughter.
And she owned it.
Every day, that little girl Anne Frank wrote her story.
Or young boys like Elie Wiesel,
who was crammed into a cattle car, rode into Auschwitz-Birkenau,
watched his entire family perish in a chimney.
But he wrote about it.
Or courageous little girls in places like Bosnia-Herzegovina,
who watched her friends being picked off by snipers,
and yet every day she too wrote about it."
So my students started writing their story.
And in doing so, we started sending these letters off
like these messages in a bottle.
Maybe someone will listen to us.
Maybe our cries won't fall on deaf ears.
Maybe these icons will come and see us,
150 gangsters.
And they came.
The woman who helped Anne Frank in that tiny, little attic,
this simple secretary,
got 150 letters,
and she hopped on a plane, even though there were typos and grammar mistakes,
to give homage to my students and their story.
Schindler's survivors who walked across those railroad tracks
leading into Auschwitz-Birkenau -
they too got letters from my students.
They too came.
Bosnian refugees came to our classroom. and looked at my students -
who could care less about the color of their skin,
the side of the street they came from,
or, more importantly, what their parents did or didn't do.
They came.
And then one day my students got really cocky,
and they said, "You know, Miss G, we keep sending these letters out into the world,
and all of these icons come into room 203,
and they share their world with us.
It's time that we take our world out there."
My students wanted to go on a field trip.
They wanted to go to Washington, D.C.
They wanted to follow in the footsteps of these civil rights activists,
the Freedom Riders, who got on buses and stopped at every depot
and drank out of those drinking fountains, sat at those counters,
and sat on that bus, no matter where they wanted to sit.
For those of you who have never dealt with teenagers,
the idea of taking 150 students to Washington, D.C.,
all I could think about was "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll."
And in the pit of my stomach, I knew that I had 150 students
who lived below the poverty line.
So they didn't have the luxury of going home
and talking to that hardworking single mom
and asking her to pull out her Visa,
or convincing her to write that check,
or even to go to the ATM and get that crisp $20 bill,
because if they had that $20 bill,
that should go for lights,
that should go for food in that fridge.
So I told my students, "You have to figure out a way.
If we're going to get from point A to point B,
if we're going to take this journey,
you have to figure it out."
And as we began to fundraise,
one of my students put me on the spot, like all kids will do,
and he said, "Miss G, what happens if we raise all of this money,
and we don't make it there?"
And at that moment I thought, "We're not going to make it there."
So like a deer in the headlights, I said,
"If we raise all this money and don't make our way to Washington, D.C.,
we can buy some more books.
Maybe we can take a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance.
Maybe we can have a pizza party,
so in that case it's a win-win because we did it together."
But then I stopped myself and to this day I don't know how and I don't know why,
but I said, "But if we do make that chic trip,
and we do raise that money,
your lives will never be the same."
And they did.
So, for a brief moment, I'd like to show you our field trip,
when 150 kids put down a fist, put down a gun,
picked up a pen, and wrote their story,
and took their words, their story to our nation's capital.
(Video) (Background music) Student #3: Somebody came up with this idea
that we should honor all of our friends who had been lost to senseless deaths.
Student #4: So we wrote names of people we lost in our lives on pins,
and we were wearing them as a symbol of that their spirit is still alive.
You know, they're still with us, they're still part of us.
Student #5: We all held hands,
and we left the hotel holding hands.
Student #6: We took a walk to the Washington Memorial,
and it was quite a ways
and - there were 150 of us.
And we didn't let go.
Everybody started honking at us and we just kept on walking.
Student #7: The world just goes by
and no one stops to look at somebody in their face
to actually look at them for who they are.
And so we stopped traffic,
and you could feel the presence of this is something bigger than us.
EG: I'll never forget this man rolled down his window, very disgruntled,
and he said, "What are you doing?"
and one of the "Freedom Writers" said, "We're changing the world."
(Background music ends)
(On stage) EG: For a group of 150 students,
change meant that they didn't have to be like that mother
who was strung out,
or that deadbeat dad,
that they could rewrite their own ending,
that they could be the first in their families to graduate,
the first in their families to go to college,
the first in their families to take these stories,
to put them in a book,
to send them off -
once again, like a message in a bottle -
and hope that those cries didn't fall on deaf ears.
So I sent 150 copies of my students' stories
to every single publishing house in our country.
And every single one of them rejected my students.
Every single one, except one -
the same publishing house that took a chance
on a little girl in a tiny, little attic.
So it's as it should be
that the publishing house that published "The Diary of Anne Frank"
decided to take a chance on 150 kids and published their book.
Would anybody read a book written by and for and about kids?
Apparently someone would
because this little book became the number one book in America.
And I tell you that because my students nicknamed this book
"The Little Book that Could,"
in honor of that train going down those tracks,
"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."
I stand in front of you as an ordinary teacher
who had an extraordinary experience.
And even though I haven't quite mustered up the courage
to stand in front of a tank in any square,
or like my students, stand and stop traffic by myself,
I did muster up the courage to stand in front of you today,
and so I hope that, standing in front of you,
when you see me,
you see my kids.
When you hear me,
you hear their cries.
And when a beautiful Holocaust survivor challenged my students,
and she said, "Evil prevails when good people do nothing,"
I stand before you,
challenging each and everyone of you,
each and everyone of you who is a good person,
to do something.
Don't let those cries fall on deaf ears.
Don't turn the other cheek.
Do something.
Do something for a kid in need.
Thank you.
(Applause)