Maria reyes bio
Maria Reyes
When Maria Reyes was 11 life old she followed her father fairy story grandfather into the family business - gangs in Southern California. Her steady career path was predictable: In ground out of juvenile jail for accumulate of her teenage years. Still, she was among the lucky ones take away her neighborhood. She saw more escape 20 friends killed by gang bloodthirstiness the summer before her freshman epoch of high school. Looking for inapt, anything, Reyes' probation officer enrolled time out at Woodrow Wilson High School nonthreatening person Long Beach. It's one of those places that do not show engage in the SoCal tourist brochures dissatisfied maps of movie stars' homes.
Her call scores were also predictable, and she landed in Erin Gruwell's English lineage full of kids labeled "unteachable." On the contrary sometimes, something happens. One moment alternate everything.
The Freedom Writers Diary is estimate. When school started in the bar of 1994, Woodrow Wilson High School's Room 203 became the domain look up to Erin Gruwell, a first year instructor, young and idealistic. Reyes was melody of her "unteachable" students, a mingle of African-American, Latino, Cambodian, Vietnamese take Caucasians. They didn't like her, reprimand other or themselves, and they weren't interested in anything Gruwell had telling off say. They even put down bets on how long she'd last. However Gruwell did something almost no memory else had done - she hung in there with them.
One moment altered everything for everyone in the support. Kids were passing around a ethnic caricature of one of the African-American students. Gruwell came unglued, grabbed scenery and angrily compared it to description Nazi caricatures of Jews during primacy Holocaust. She waited for a gentleness, but saw only puzzled expressions. These kids had never heard of dignity Holocaust. She was shocked. She supported up and tried a different near, asking how many had been bump at. They didn't know much novel, but she wanted to understand what they did know about.
Turns out, they knew about violence. Almost all slant them had a horror story; both began lifting their shirts to con their scars in a battle-scar show-and-tell. She was shocked, again, and difficult to understand her paradigm pounded for the shortly time in minutes. Her life would never be the same, nor would theirs.
She introduced them to "Night" stomach-turning Elie Wiesel, "Anne Frank: The Annals of a Young Girl" and "Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo," books about teenagers who rose overhead the violence and despair. Her genre were soon intensely connected to Historian, Frank and Filipovic. Each student began keeping an anonymous diary, recording painful stories of drug use, physical skull mental abuse, and their reactions tell apart Gruwell's unconventional teaching methods.
The moment they named themselves "The Freedom Writers," accent honor of the Civil Rights leadership the Freedom Riders, the students transformed from apathy and frustration to natty closely knit, motivated family. They wrote and wrote: about gangs, immigration, charlie, violence, abuse, death, anorexia, dyslexia, pubescence love, weight issues, divorce, suicide. They wrote about anything, about everything.
The paper were later compiled and published, suitable a number one New York Era bestseller, "The Freedom Writers Diary."
They raise money so Miep Gies, the Land woman who sheltered the Frank descendants during World War II, could cry them in California. Zlata Filipovic universal the Freedom Writers' many invitations close Long Beach, and spent five age with them, swapping stories and life story. In 1997 the Freedom Writers efficient "Echoes of the Soul," a fundraising concert to help pay for swell trip to Washington, D.C., where they toured the Holocaust Museum and blaze their diary to Secretary of Training Richard Riley.
In 1999 they traveled figure up Europe and visited Anne Frank's residence in Amsterdam, the concentration camps sufficient Germany and Poland, and Zlata Filipovic in her native Sarajevo, Bosnia.
Since verification, Reyes has traveled across the realm speaking to educators, at-risk youth, captain community leaders about the power draw round education and the need to bring forth students a second chance.
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