Teaching: It’s not just a job.

As Giroux and Simon list their ideal of pedagogical practices, a sense is gathered that it demands a lot from the teacher. They even recognize this: “Given the fact that the practice of critical pedagogy requires a substantial personal investment of time and energy, does it require the near abandonment of a teacher’s ‘private’ life?”  (Giroux & Simon, p. 24)

In Freedom Writer’s, Ms. Gruwell is told by her husband and her father that her teaching position is “just a job,” but because of her goals and teaching methods it becomes so much more important and she becomes so much more involved. She sacrifices her marriage to remain an influence in her student’s lives. One can argue whether it was worth it or not, but the effectiveness of her approach is evident in the results of her students’ lives and the book they produced and contributed to the educational community.

Ms. Gruwell had to sacrifice so much because of the lack of support from the school administration.  The administration operates under an idea suggested by Hobbs: “Unfortunately, some teachers believe that only advanced students can engage with challenging contemporary issues and pedagogical approaches that put much of the classroom intellectual work on the students’ shoulders.” (Hobbs, 158) Fortunately teachers like Ms. Gruwell have ideals and follow them. She is not afraid to challenge her students and does so by relating to them and helping them think critically.  Hobbs talks about making them more politically aware through media, and inspiring civic action. Ms. Gruwell does more so to make them socially aware—what they can rise above and overcome, and that they are not alone, historically speaking.  They end up changing their community by changing themselves; the internal effects of their education affect the external environment.

“By providing a way to engage students in further analysis, media literacy education offers a way to diffuse the situation or even turn a negative event into a positive learning experience.” (Scheibe and Rogow, p. 74) Ms. Gruwell intercepts a racist caricature of one student draw by another. She realizes how they might be able to personally relate to it when she makes the connection of the students’ racial stereotypes to the stereotyping of the Jews, and she turns this into a teaching moment and relates their hatred toward one another to the Holocaust.  As “Educational experiences… can link personal experience, historical knowledge, and rhetorical sklls, deepening students’ understanding of how social power and influence shape social action in ways that may propel social change.” (Hobbs, 148) That social change happens in room 203 of their public high school, but it reaches out because the students change their role within the community and become productive instead of destructive. The end up making a literary compilation of their own to share their experiences. “Students can learn about the power of media to connect us emotionally to others and to express complex and multifaceted points of view when they create politically meaningful messages that reach real audiences.” (Hobbs, 158) They are able to turn their social awareness around and create a product that causes others to be aware of their social reality. Because of Ms. Gruwell’s creative pedagogical practices, her students become engaged in and outside of the classroom, and she ultimately saves their lives because she abandons her private life for her "job." She takes an interest in her students and how to get through to them by relating different forms of media, and in turn they take an interest in their education.