One Word: Inspirational
mother of 16 year old son, Movie Reviewer, a storyteller, A Big Giant Sap, a believer of fate
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FEB
27
2008
Freedom Writers —
Apparently it's not easy being the child of a film and television reviewer. I get the expected eye roll every time I tell my son I have something I want him to see and that I think he'll like it. He knows it's either a TV show or a film with some type of inspirational message. I keep thinking one of these times, the messages are going to sink in. I did that with the film Freedom Writers, dragging him to see it, and in essence the teacher in the film does much the same thing with her students.Hillary Swank stars as a new teacher with hopes and dreams about what she will accomplish in her new job. She wants to inspire, and she expects everyone to love her and do well. The problem is, she is placed in an inner city school with modern day Sweathogs, kids that gave up on life a long time ago, and only seem to go to school for the social effect. They're absolutely floored that their new teacher actually expects them to do some type of work.
Yet, just as I won't give up on giving my son inspirational messages through TV and film, Swank's character won't give up trying to get these kids to learn something in her English class. She fights for it, to the extent of putting her marriage in jeopardy, but she isn't as jaded as her students are. She still thinks it can be done, unlike her fellow educators who have given up on these kids as well. Through it all, her father is very disapproving of this job. Knowing he had a smart daughter on his hands, he expected so much more for her than just being "a teacher.
Swank's character eventually finds a way to reach her students ... and my son. By the end of Freedom Writers, he was completely in awe that there were teachers out there that would do anything to reach their students, becoming teachers to actually make a difference in someone's life. As a freshman in high school, he's just beginning to learn that there are teachers out there like that. We've all had them. For me it was my Sophomore English teacher who took our discussion of bongs and pot and turned it into a grammar lesson, as he had kids telling him bong was a noun, not a verb, and the opposite was true for toke. Should we have been talking drugs in school? No, but ... he found a way to reach those kids that otherwise wouldn't have been.
The best part of Freedom Writers is that it's based on a true story. Swank's character is a real person, and instead of inspiring a few kids in class that weren't getting it, she inspired a whole classroom, and instead of just writing one paper, they wrote a book, and became inspirational themselves.
Freedom Writers is recommended by LauraBelle
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