About Erin Gruwell
Erin Gruwell’s career as an educator began in 1994 as a student teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif. When she was hired as a full-time faculty member the next year, Grewell began transforming her students’ lives by fostering an educational philosophy that valued and promoted diversity. She encouraged them to rethink rigid beliefs about themselves and others, to reconsider daily decisions and to re-chart their futures. Their collective journey was chronicled in The Freedom Writers Diary.
Gruwell currently works as president of the Freedom Writers Foundation, raising awareness and spreading the Freedom Writers method by traveling around the world to speak inside large corporations, government institutions, schools and community associations.
She and her students have appeared on numerous television news shows and National Public Radio, and their story has been documented in several national newspapers and People magazine. In 2007 a critically acclaimed feature-length film based on Gruwell’s work with her students and their resulting transformations was released.
Gruwell is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, where 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.