Blog Post 2

I chose this clip from the movie Freedom Writers. Hillary Swank acts as Erin Gruwell. This is a young teacher who inspires a class full of at-risk students. The entire community including their staff at their school have gave up on these students. However, Erin teaches these students to learn tolerance, apply their selves completely and even continue education past high school. No one takes her serious initially because they are very set in their own ways and don't know anything but that. One of the major things that Erin notices was the separation among each race and group of people. Their own identity is what placed them in their group of friends. She immediately broke that separation and forced the students to comply with sitting by someone they wouldn't normally sit by. This was a big challenge and even cause fights but she was determined to do this. Eventually they were able to do this alone and even without issues arising. It became a choice to them and something they wanted to do. As I mentioned before these kids were hopeless because their own community gave up on them. She came in and brought a sense of purpose that pushed these kids in a better direction. Eric assigned them work to do which was writing in these journals to share their own story the same way Anne Frank did. This is where major improvements came in when she showed them that they had more in them that they never saw. Prior to this these kids didn't take any of these talks serious.  The attitude of these kids from the beginning to the end changed dramatically. She definitely uses all aspects of the relational leadership model. Her ability to empower and bring that sense of purpose is definitely in this clip. Although her efforts were the cause of this major turn around she gives the credit to the students their selves which I think might help them to step up more and take more initiative and have more hope in their lives.