Color Doesn’t Matter

Freedom Writers, is a movie about race and violence. Throughout the movie, there was an English class that was mixed with blacks, whites, and ricans. In this time period, not one person got along. There were fights everyday between the races, everyone skipped school, gun violence was involved, and the teacher couldn’t even teach. The teenagers did not want to learn because they thought it was not cool, or felt embarrassed. The teacher didn’t give up, and looked beyond her eyes to get the students the help they needed.

Most of the kids didn’t have one parent growing up, or experienced violence and hate crime because of the area that they lived in. The teacher decided that she wanted to find books that relate to her students’ lives.The principal didn’t want to take responsibility in helping the teacher find books, because he knew every other teacher couldn’t help the kids, so why could she? She used her own money, and as she was distributing the book, which was The Diary of Anne Frank. They started to read on their own, and were actually interested in it. The students still didn’t like each other, but the teacher made them do activities so that they could interact with one another. 

Every student got a journal, in the journal you could write about whatever. Any personal things that the students wanted to get off their chest, and they had the privilege whether or not they wanted the teacher to read it or not. Believe it or not, every student wanted it to be read, and the teacher realized that being a colored person is hard. She realized that being looked at wrong in public can cause you to get shot, or get in a fight. As time progressed, they went to a museum to talk about history, and even got to talk to a Holocaust survivor. 

Just because you are not the same race as someone, doesn’t mean that you have to hate them. In the movie, all of the kids once became friends with one another. They even were able to move forward to the next grade level. All of the staff were surprised and upset at the same time because they were confused on how a new teacher changed them for the better. Everyone is different in their own way, you have to look beyond the outside, and into the inside.