- California teacher whose story was turned into a movie.
- I think anybody in that situation,
you have to be scared out of your mind.
- I was told that my kids would never read a book
because they were too stupid.
- It's actually school policy to shame the poor kids.
- There is no way in hell that somebody like her
was every gonna make a difference in my life.
- [Reporter] The gangsters, the taggers,
the chronically apathetic.
- [Male Student] Stop acting like you're trying
to understand our situation!
- It was very evident that they didn't wanna be there.
I just get so emotional when I talk about them.
I am not a counselor. I am not a therapist.
How am I supposed to help these kids change?
- 40% of high school students have failing grades,
you guys, 40%.
- [Man] Some of the world's worst public schools.
- [Man] They're gonna turn into criminals.
- A young girl walked in wearing an ankle monitor.
She had a black eye,
and she had a probation officer standing
in the corner of my classroom.
- I was scared of Maria, worried that she might shoot me
if I said the wrong thing.
- She was so defiant.
She wrote, "I hate Erin Gruwell,
and if I wasn't on probation, I'd probably shank her."
- She tried to get to know me, and I made her pay for that.
- All I wanted my students to do was put down that fist,
put down that rock, put down that gun.
At first, it wasn't so easy.
- [Man] How did the first day of school turn tragic?
- I initially explained the rules.
We're gonna stand on opposite sides of the room.
Here's this tape in the center.
I'm gonna ask questions, and you come.
My students thought, "This woman is crazy.
Why is she asking me questions
that have nothing to do with education?"
Question after question, they giggled, they came,
they did fist bumps, high fives.
They rolled their eyes,
and that line became that gravitational pull
that the questions became real.
And then I asked a question,
and I should've phrased it differently.
And I just said, "Stand the line
if you have ever been homeless."
And out darted Sue Ellen, and she went to that line
like she had done on every other question
about Snoop or movies or every other question,
and she realized, "I am all alone."
And I watched her look at her feet.
I think she just wanted to disappear.
I think she thought in her head,
"Hurry, ask another question.
I just wanna go back to the wall.
I don't wanna be seen because if they see me,
they're gonna know.
They're gonna know that I'm that girl
that doesn't know where I'm gonna sleep tonight."
And as she stood there looking at her feet,
not wanting to acknowledge anyone or anything,
suddenly out of nowhere came this beautiful girl
with these bouncing braids, Tiffany.
And when I'd asked that question originally,
Tiffany told me she took a deep breath
and walked backwards.
And she saw Sue Ellen standing on that line all alone,
and she realized, "That is my story."
Tiffany walked to that line,
and she looked at every single one of us.
She wanted us to see her.
This little girl would stand on the corner
of the busiest street in Long Beach,
and she stood there with a cardboard box,
"Will work for food."
So at the age of 14, that little girl
was out on that street every single day,
and yet she was standing on this line
in this classroom, but she was so regal.
She was so courageous.
It's like she owned her story,
and then owning her story in that glorious moment,
out came Nerata, this beautiful boy.
And he stood by Sue Ellen, and he stood by Tiffany,
and he stood there, and he owned his story,
and at that moment I knew.
This is gonna change that game,
and then in walked this little girl.
She was so defiant. She had an ankle monitor.
She had a probation officer.
She had a father who was in a maximum security prison,
and I found that she'd just been released
from juvenile hall a few days before school started.
- There was no way in hell that somebody
like her and that looked like her
was ever gonna make a difference in my life.
- So she picked up her pen, and she wrote,
"I hate Erin Gruwell, and if I wasn't on probation,
I would probably shank her."
(thunder cracks)
And in that moment, there was a part of me that panicked,
and I thought, "I am not a counselor.
I am not a therapist.
How am I supposed to help these kids change?"
And I was told by the chair of my English department
that my kids would never read a book
from cover to cover because they were too stupid.
So without really thinking it through,
I just got in my car, and I drove to a bookstore,
and I ordered 150 copies of "The Diary of Anne Frank,"
and I gave them the book.
Well, when I gave Maria the opportunity
to pick up that book, at first it wasn't so easy.
Because she truly did not wanna read it.
In her mind, Anne Frank was not Latina,
Anne Frank did not come from the hood.
- I opened this stupid book because,
in the back of my mind, I thought that I
was gonna prove Miss Gruwell wrong.
- She would come back everyday,
and she would ask questions about Anne
in juxtaposition to her gangster mentality,
and I realized that she's actually reading.
- It started getting interesting
when things started going bad.
That's when I thought,
"Okay, maybe she's not this spoiled little girl
that I thought she was.
Maybe she doesn't have a perfect little life."
And that's actually when I took a liking to her.
I came to the entry where she's describing this window,
her only connection to the outside world.
She couldn't even put her hand outside
because one of the Gestapo or somebody
would know that they were in hiding.
One day, this bird lands close to her, to the tree
and outside the window, and she writes,
"Sometimes, I feel like a bird in a cage,
and I wish I could fly away."
I was able to relate to that feeling
of knowing the outside world
and only having this certain connection to it.
And from then on, I knew she was gonna make it.
She had to make it.
She was gonna make it because why else
would we be reading this book?
And she's gonna make it because she's a good person
and she hasn't done anything wrong.
- Maria came in one day, stormed in,
and threw the book across the classroom and said,
"Why didn't you tell me?"
And I was taken aback, and I said, "Tell you what?"
And she said, "Why didn't you tell me that Anne dies?"
- At the very end when she doesn't make it,
I felt that disappointment that I felt every other time
in my life when I really believed in something.
It was that same feeling of going to the window
and waiting, hoping that my father was gonna come home,
and he didn't.
Every feeling of disappointment all
of a sudden came crashing together at that moment
because I so desperately wanted her to make it
because if she didn't make it,
then what were the chances of somebody like me,
who's a bad person, actually making it out?
- I felt horrible.
I felt horrible because I just assumed
that maybe she had known, that I just assumed
that everyone knew that Anne Frank
was this iconic figure of this tragedy.
I never wanted to take away my students' hope.
She did make it, Maria.
She did make it because she wrote about it.
Because Anne Frank wrote about it,
she's gonna go on living even after her death.
- For the very first time, I felt myself changing
in a way that I couldn't explain or I couldn't describe.
- Well, I wanted to give Maria and 149 others an opportunity
for a second chance,
and maybe they couldn't change that cast
of characters they were dealt,
but maybe they could rewrite their story.
Maybe they could rewrite their own ending.
So we decided that we were gonna write
to the woman who hid Anne Frank.
At that time, she was 87 years old.
She was living in Amsterdam.
My students sat down at computers, the first time ever,
and began to write and tell their story.
When that 87-year-old woman, a simple secretary
who had helped eight people in an attic
for two years in the middle of a war,
in the middle of a Holocaust,
when she sat down to read my students' stories,
I think she saw something in them that she saw in Anne,
promise,
potential,
hope.
She decided to hop on a plane, regardless of the color
of their skin, regardless of the side
of the street they came from,
regardless of what their parents did or didn't do,
and she walked into our lives,
and she gave my students a challenge.
She challenged my students to make sure
that Anne's death was not in vain.
And in the distance, I saw Maria,
this tiny little girl who'd wear this ankle monitor everyday
and her pants were sagging, and for the first time,
she was this vision.
And she said, "I don't wanna be pregnant
by the time I turn 15 like my mama,
and I don't wanna spend the rest
of my life behind bars like my daddy,
and I don't wanna be six feet under
by the time I turn 18 like my cousin.
I wanna change." And change she did.
I watched 150 kids who weren't supposed
to make it be the first in their families,
the first to graduate from high school,
be the first in their families to go off to college.
My students went on to write a book.
They'd never read a book before,
and then they went on to write a book
that was the number one book in America.
My students were able to take their story
and put it on the big screen.
For a group of 150 students, change meant that they
could rewrite their own ending.
Change is possible that any time, any moment,
anyone can become something bigger,
be brave, be bold, change the legacy,
and change the person you'll become.