What's Right with Education? Erin Gruwell's Reconnecting the Disconnected
1998; Project Innovation Austin; Volume: 119; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0013-1172
Autores Tópico(s)Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
ResumoA new teacher, Erin Gruwell, began her career much as many novice teachers do--with the ideal of helping students to learn and to lead effective lives. However, in the course of just four years, Erin managed, dramatically so, to change the lives of her 150 students, many of whom had never succeeded academically and several of whom had records as gang-bangers and taggers. With uncharacteristic zeal, Erin engaged her students considerably beyond the confines of her classroom and, in the process, successfully applied many of the `best practices' involved in teaching and learning. Introduction Erin Gruwell, a public high school teacher in Long Beach, California, has accomplished in the first four years of her career something that most drawn-out and costly educational reform initiatives have failed to do--to bridge the ubiquitous cultural-economic gaps found in the heterogeneous population of southern California. Appropriately enough, her stunning feat of transforming all 150 of her at-risk freshmen not only into high school graduates, but college freshmen, has been well celebrated. Locally, she has been recognized as the `Teacher of the Year' by her large urban school district and featured, along with her students, in full-page stories in major newspapers as well as in segments on national television broadcasts such as ABC's Prime Time Live, as well as local programming on KNBC's `Crystal Apple Awards and KCBS's `What's Right With Southern California'. Erin Gruwell, with her dynamic demeanor, is an inspired individual who has captured the hearts and minds of her students. Throughout her young life, she has aspired to advance the cause of human rights and has, in fact, succeeded in making significant changes, especially with the 150 young people whose lives she intends to follow for years to come. Erin had always wanted `to change the world' and, indeed, while completing her undergraduate work at the University of California, Irvine, she succeeded in forging several institutional changes. But, interestingly, she had not ever considered education as a profession in which she might achieve social reform--until, that is, she became inspired by hearing a teacher speak about the rewards of teaching in inner city schools, and until she subsequently participated in an actual classroom under the guidance of a vary dedicated and accomplished high school teacher, Sabrina Arney of the Long Beach Unified School District. It was during that semester of field work that Erin began to realize that as a teacher she could, indeed, effect change. Once, then, that her career began in the same district, she became an assertive advocate for her students' benefit. She demonstrated bold determination and courage, as well as boundless energy, rarely becoming discouraged by any naysayers; for those who might have indicated that one of her proposed ideas could not be done, her usual response has been Just watch me! And, fortunately for everyone involved, Erin's district superintendent, Dr. Carl Cohn, wholeheartedly embraced Erin's vision and fully supported her stellar efforts to institute reform in her high school. Indeed, the wide acclaim for this new stand and deliver classroom teacher is justified, according to Cohn, who considers Erin's sense of commitment to inner city students and their potential as nothing short of truly remarkable. As one of Erin's strongest supporters, he has witnessed firsthand how she's managed to call forth the best in them--their intelligence, good will, and diligence. An after-school on-site visit with Erin's students confirmed much of what had been written and broadcast about `Miss G' and her teaching. Her four classes of students, who halfway through their four-year sequence at Wilson High School joined together as one large `family' unit, enthusiastically agree that Miss G is much more than just a good teacher. As one young student remarked, She's like our mom, and our room is like a safe home to us--even late at night and on the weekends. …
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