A teacher Freedom Writers. Diary of an experience

Abstract

This article deals with the development of teacher professionalism through the experience of letting students write about themselves. It draws on the personal experience of the author, who applied this approach while teaching in an Italian high school.
Since there is no one-size-fits-all model of teaching, teachers’ professionalism unfolds as the capability of answering the existential questions of classes that are framed within the boundaries of a localized context. Drawing on these assumptions, literature teacher Erin Gruwell helped the students of
Room 203 of the Woodrow Wilson High School (Long Beach, California) to re-write their own stories in a diary form. Her writing workshop activity gave new hope to low-performing students.
Erin Gruwell’s experience has been reproduced at the Institute for Hospitality “Paolo Baffi” (Fiumicino, Italy), Class 2F. With the awareness that every educational path is unique, the following paper describes the nature of the on-going research, which has been written down in the form of a private journal. At the end of such experience, the undersigned has become a teacher for Freedom Writers, that is somebody who records his own mistakes,
the injustices he suffered, and who takes care of the fragile stories of his students: a teacher who teaches how to hope.