Civil Rights Movement. Since graduating, they have kept their promise of trying to change education. They have pursued their undergraduate and graduate degrees, while continuing to share their story and mentor students across the country about what it's like to receive a second chance. Erin Gruwell – Founder Erin Gruwell is the woman who began the Freedom Writers and compiled her students' stories into The Freedom Writers Diary. She started teaching in the fall of 1994 at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Long Beach, California. In interviews, she has said that she thinks she is the one who changed the most. "Everything I was told not to do, I did. They told me not to smile. I smiled. They told me never to show emotion. How could I not be a person, though? How could I not be compassionate and give a student a hug when they were hurting? I changed the most. I became the student." She has said that she thinks teaching literature and writing is a great way to help people because there are so many ways to interpret any story. She would tell her students that she would teach them the rules so they could go out and break them. Erin Gruwell first knew that she wanted to become a teacher through her father, who was a civil rights activist in the U.S. When she was young, they would talk about equality and fighting for the underdog. He was later affiliated with the Anaheim Angels. He would always say that you should judge a batter by his swing and not by the color of his skin. So much of her sensibility came from her dad. After the Los Angeles Riots in the early nineties, she changed what she wanted to do. Until then, she had wanted to be a lawyer and go to law school, but she decided that she could do more that was proactive in a classroom than reactionary in a courtroom. Freedom Writers in other schools Schools which employ Gruwell's teaching methods include Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, Georgia, De La Salle Education Center in Kansas City, Missouri, Dunbar Middle School in Fort Worth, Texas, the Leadership Program at Crossroads Alternative High School in Coon Rapids, MN, and The Darkness to Light Education Project, which supports Crossroads Leadership. Groups inspired by the Freedom Writers include the Students of Unlimited Leadership