Question

1. Can anyone help after watching the ted talk by Erin Gruwell who helped freedom writer write their story and the other ted talk by Adam Saenz who wrote his own story how did the 2 ted talk inspire you?

Answer 1

It was the time of 1992 when an unarmed black Rodney king was badly beaten by the white police officers. The court had acquitted all the police officers. There were large scale violence and frustration among the black because of the frustration and abuse they suffered at the hands of the white police.

Erin Gruwell ( August 15, 1969) was aware of the mounting tension. She wanted to help these kids to control their anger in a nonviolence way thus she took up teaching as her profession and joined Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, the school was famous for its ethnic and socio-economic diversity. Many of the students were from the areas marked by gang violence and drug trafficking.

She soon realized that the class was divided between the black student and a white student. She came to know that her students are unaware of the history it was stereotyping and its negative outcome. She took her work as a challenge and decided to teach her such tolerance. The next year she was given the bunch of the students who were abandoned and not wanted even by their own parents, they were rejected children the class was sharply divided into whites, Latinos, African-Americans, and Asians, and these students were finding themselves safe in their hood because the racial violence was present in the class.

With the view to make them aware of the destruction, the ethnic divisions bring she made them aware of the diaries written by   Anne Frank in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and Zlata Filipović of Bosnia and Herzegovina when she started disclosing the effect of ethnic division and its effect the students started relating themselves with these people.

She took the opportunity and told her students to write their own diaries, and write the day to day personal events, the students started realizing the effect of diary writing. They started sharing their fear, thoughts, of today and future, the domestic abuse, homelessness, and how they are abandoned by their parents. Under these circumstances they were made to believe that they have to stay in poverty, violence, and death, there are no chances of bright academic achievement.

She helped in reforming the students and they became more focused on their studies, they created strong bonds with each other and became united.

Her students never let her down she made an opportunity for the student to meet a young writer Zlata Filipović and  Miep Gies who was Anna Frank's father. Erin was sending personally sending the letters to the letters Zlata written by her students, she transformed these abandoned kids into a confident student. The message and the real-life story by Zlata and Miep motivated her students that they too can change the environment.

She was able to change the life of her 150 students these students are compiling their diaries in a book form and millionaire John Tu gave them 35 computers. These students are called freedom writers, they were not the writers, but they wrote their diaries for the future so that the world can know that ethnic division is equal to genocide.

Adam Saenz is a psychologist he did not have any idea of teaching a classroom, according to him the teacher has the ability to change her student's future.

He shared his story that he is Hispanic and his parent did not take interest in his life and studies, he was involved in drugs and suffering from depression, he was confused about his own life he worked as dishwasher and even thought of committing suicide at the age of 19, at that time he happened to come across two letters written to him by his senior high school teachers. He was appreciated by his teacher and she had written that he is a talented boy, it was by his English teacher, and the second appreciation letter was by another teacher who inspired him to write his journal. Those words from the teacher jolted him and he became what he is today,

Thus according to him, the letters were his inspiration and the teachers giving inspiration to their students is like turning them in the right direction. He thanks his teacher for what they have unknowingly changed him and transformed him into a successful psychologist.

The two ted talks are inspiring it throws light on the relation between the students and the teacher. The teachers in both the talk shows the teachers became inspiration for the students and in return the students take their teachers seriously and the words spoken or written by the teachers can change his/her students life, and the students will always remember that the foundation stone of the successful life is kept by the teacher on that he has to build his career and success.