by Elise Goitia '18

Acclaimed teacher and author Erin Gruwell will present with remarks focusing on Educational Equality and the Value of Diversity on Thursday, September 28 at 7:00 p.m. in the Kresge Theater in the Ford Center for Fine Arts.

The presentation is free and open to the public.

Gruwell is the founder of the Freedom Writers Foundation. She created the Freedom Writers Methodology, a progressive teaching philosophy and curricula designed to achieve acceptance and excellence from all students. She currently tours around the world to teach educators how to implement her innovative lesson plans into their own classrooms.

A graduate of the University of California Irvine, she received the Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Award. She earned her Master's Degree and teaching credentials from California State University Long Beach, where she was honored as Distinguished Alumna by the School of Education.

Gruwell guided 150 of her students, many of whom were written off by the education system, to use the power of education to graduate from high school and attend college.

Through the experience Gruwell and her students wrote and published The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them, which was later the basis of the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank. In the book, Gruwell discusses how she challenged her students to overcome the seemingly insurmountable problems of poverty, racism, violence through writing.

The presentation is sponsored by the Knox Cultural Affairs Committee, Educational Studies Department, and the Western Illinois Reading Council (WIRC).