STEPHENVILLE, TEXAS—The Jim Boyd Effective Schools Project (ESP) brings highly renowned speakers to Tarleton State University each year. This year is no exception as ESP welcomes Erin Gruwell, president of the Freedom Writers Foundation, to speak in the Clyde H. Wells Fine Arts Center at 9 a.m. on April 9.
Tickets to the presentation are free to ESP members and available to others for $35. They must be purchased in advance.
Gruwell’s visit is part of ESP’s leadership development conferences featuring speakers most school districts could not afford on their own. Featured speakers focus on the latest education techniques, practices or strategies designed to increase classroom learning and improve educators within their classrooms.
Gruwell is the teacher portrayed by Hilary Swank in the movie, “The Freedom Writers.” By tapping into her students’ cultural realities, she was able to establish bonds of trust that led to accomplishments her students never thought were possible.
In the fall of 1994, in room 203 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif., Gruwell faced her first group of students, dubbed by the administration as “unteachable, at-risk” teenagers.
Gruwell transformed her students’ lives by fostering an educational philosophy that valued and promoted diversity. She encouraged students to rethink rigid beliefs about themselves and others, to reconsider daily decisions and to re-chart their futures.
Under Gruwell's steadfast support, her students shattered stereotypes to become critical thinkers, aspiring college students and citizens for change. They even dubbed themselves the “Freedom Writers,” in homage to the Civil Rights activists the “Freedom Riders.”??
Gruwell and her students went on capture their experience in “The Freedom Writers Diary – How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them.” The group was also featured on numerous talk shows and news reports.
Gruwell has since left teaching and is now channeling her classroom experiences toward a broader cause. As president of the Freedom Writers Foundation, she raises awareness by traveling nationwide to speak inside large corporations, governmental institutions and community associations.
ESP is a collaborative professional development program between Tarleton and public schools within its service area. Since it began, ESP has become one of the nation’s longest-running school-improvement programs. It is also one of the most unique educational partnerships in Texas, and possibly the United States.
To order tickets to Gruwell’s presentation, contact ESP Program Specialist Debbie Rudder via e-mail at drudder@tarleton.edu. If you don’t have access to e-mail, Rudder can also be reached at (254) 968-9805.
For more information about ESP, contact Rudder or Dr. Bill Larmer. Larmer can be reached at (254) 968-9367. More information about the Freedom Writers Foundation is available at www.freedomwritersfoundation.org.
