The Freedom Writers' Touch

I have just finished watching the Freedom Writers last night and it has made a radical and definite impact upon me.

What the teacher of Room 203 has done is unparalleled. We, teachers, keep seeing our job as something to do to earn that salary we need to support the life we live. We keep everything clean, organized and within their little compartments.

I admire those teachers who have the guts and the courage to challenge the system. To make it face its own inadequacy in catering to the real needs of people.

Filipino students are not like the students of Room 203. Nope. Our students are still nice and good and neat and decent and well-behaved. Those who have issues never make it into the schoolroom. At the most, they would spend a month or two in school and drop out of the system to return again next year and the next and the next.

And what do we feel once they leave our classrooms? Well, sometimes, it’s good if we discover they are gone. Then, we go sympathetic and sorry or sometimes self righteous and angry – but after talking about it with a colleague or two, we conveniently forget them.

Watching Freedom Writers has reinforced my belief that every learner counts and every learner matters. The system wants mass education for the masses, not really taking into account that each individual is special and unique. In college, our professors kept hammering and yammering on about individual differences. But, once you leave college, the system makes sure you get the chance to take not of individual differences during trainings and seminars – which is not often.

I am glad there is a teacher like  Ms. Gruwell showed that teachers can truly make a difference.

That movie also convinced me that for a teacher to really focus all her energies in teaching, she must not have a family. Gruwell’s husband divorced her because he wanted to live a life he does not feel bad about…that he cannot be a wife to her…Funny. Husbands expect wives to do that. Why can’t they give wives the same courtesy. It simply means sharing in each other’s life.

I have met several successful men who do that. When their wives have to go on trips, activities and all those things, the husbands come and show their support.

But then, it will only happen if you are quite lucky to have a husband who shares the same sentiments and beliefs you have.

What the teacher did was cool. What she did was show us that if we care, we can make a difference. Do we? Care, that is.