Part 1: With passion, a class pours out troubles on paper

First in the series

Friday, Feb. 17 - Eighth grader David Leal stands at his desk and, in a deep voice, with a slight Latino accent, begins reading from his diary.

He wants his teacher to know what it's really like growing up in Philadelphia.

"I'm from Philly, the city people call Brotherly Love, where brothers have enough hate in them to pick up a 7 millimeter and murder their own blood. And as for love - it doesn't exist."

His 30 classmates at Olney's Grover Washington Jr. Middle School listen, rapt. Shifting from foot to foot, David, 15, continues:

"... I'm from where you can't walk to the street, let alone from the house to the car, knowing it could be the last breath you take... .

"I'm from where the style of losing virginity at the age of 13 is in, and where the boy's too stupid to wear a condom... . So there goes a child raising another child. I'm from the night where the bedtime stories are the bullets and the good sounds are the sirens."

That day in February, when David's class began sharing their emotionally raw journal entries, marked the start of an unusual and powerful odyssey.

Their teacher, Michael Galbraith, had embraced an approach to writing so new that there is no formal curriculum or body of research to prove how well it works.

Yet, it is so exciting that Paramount Pictures is making a movie, starring Hilary Swank, about Erin Gruwell, the Long Beach, Calif., teacher who pioneered the idea and watched many of her struggling high school students blossom into college-bound youngsters, eager to write and succeed.

The technique is straightforward: Get kids to write by writing about their own lives.

Over four years in the 1990s, Gruwell, then in her 20s, had her students write on such things as alcoholism, gang initiation, racism, homelessness and abuse. They also read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, to give their experiences context.

For Gruwell, the experiment became a mission, and then a book filled with the students' heart-wrenching essays: The Freedom Writers Diary. With 235,000 copies in print, it is named for the Freedom Riders, who helped integrate the South.

This year, Gruwell coached 16 teachers, including Galbraith, in her method, which encourages tolerance. He's the only one from Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and his class is among the youngest.

Over the semester, Galbraith's students would pour out their fears and feelings into their journals, while exploring the violence in their lives, their city and beyond.

They would reveal to their classmates thoughts that they had never shared, even with family.

Their attitudes toward school would improve. Some belligerent students would settle down. Career goals would shift. Some who barely wrote would end the year dashing off long pieces in metaphor and rhyme.

They would become tolerant of one another in ways that Galbraith had seen only once before - when he first tried the program in 2004-05.

"When people risk, they're willing to, maybe, love each other more."

• 

Galbraith sits at a student's desk in the back of the room and asks for another volunteer.

Heather Rodriguez, 13, slowly rises from her chair, and reads what she's written about a very close relative.

"Being half white and half Puerto Rican isn't easy," she says, calling the relative "racist against me and my little sisters. That lady...," Heather begins to cry.

She pauses and takes a couple of breaths.

"That lady never accepted me and my sister. She didn't even get a chance to know us for us. She doesn't even like my father for the simple fact that he is Puerto Rican... ."

With her last word, she collapses in her seat and buries her face in her hands. Another 13-year-old, Cynthia Vega, rushes to Heather's side and rubs her back.

The two girls disappear into the hall, taking a break from the readings.

Long Nguyen has written on "the American dream." The 14-year-old, who arrived from Vietnam when he was 8 and wants to join the military so he can take Vietnam back from the communists who killed his grandfather, rips into the idea.

"I spit on my dreams," Long says in a low, firm voice. "The more hope and work I put in my dream, the more it hurt me at the end... . The American dream never existed and never will it appear. It's just legend and more lies, lies that weaken people's mind and courage.

"There's no such things as dreams, just obstacles I have to overcome and destinations I have to reach."

Galbraith, 40, looks at the teen in astonishment. He didn't expect such bitterness from him.

There were so many concerns he had about these children, beyond their academics - more than 40 percent read below the national average.

Some had had a rough start to the year. Hasan Evans, 13, had constantly sassed Galbraith. Reggie Whitman, 14, brimmed with anger - he'd even flipped over a desk one day. Though a strong reader, Trey McCloud, 13, had been reluctant to pick up a pencil. Jeremiah Robinson, 13, saw himself as a class outcast and was kicked and punched by other students.

Cynthia, an ebullient teenager, was racking up absences. There were students with parents in jail, students with friends and family who had been shot or killed.

The violence around them made it more likely that they would use violence themselves to solve problems.

Many such children prove to be resilient, though researchers are only beginning to understand why. Having a stable, positive relationship with an adult, enjoying some successes and having an understanding of one's environment may be factors.

And writing about traumatic experiences can be an outlet - another way to cope.

"Some kids engage in behavior to prove they exist... spitballs, shooting somebody. If you can prove you exist by writing and reading your biography, it's got to be helpful," says Richard Gelles, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice.

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Cynthia, a tall girl with long brown hair, who had returned from comforting Heather in the hall, has a more positive take on the American dream.

"I know what it's like to have a rough life and I know what it's like to have parents care. But you can't take anger out on the world. We live in a world with cocky rich people and ghetto rough girls around to judge you and put you down, but we are all better than that.

"So, to me, no, the American dream is not imaginary. It's real. We just have to work hard to make it that way."

• 

The "Freedom Writers" idea came to Grover Washington in 2004, after Robert Vogel, an education professor at La Salle University, which has a partnership with the school, met Gruwell at a wedding in California.

"I went back and I read her book. I called her, and said, 'You've got to come out and meet my kids at Grover Washington,'" he recalled. "I just thought it would be a great opportunity for her to take a look at the same kind of kids, who are going through the same things at a much younger age."

At first, Galbraith was unsure he wanted to try an approach that went beyond the write-about-yourself programs in some schools. Some of his colleagues were skeptical, too, questioning the appropriateness of the book, which includes foul language, accounts of molestation and students using guns. In 2004, an Oregon teacher was disciplined after she used the book without parents' permission.

But Galbraith and his principal decided that the benefits outweighed the risks. That first year, Gruwell visited the school three times as Galbraith watched tough students break down and cry before their classmates and timid ones stand tall with newfound confidence.

"They had a voice and a stage where they could be heard," Galbraith explained.

With their parents' consent, this year's eighth graders also read Gruwell's book and wrote on topics Galbraith suggested:

Expound on the code of the streets. Describe your life in an "I am from" piece. A violent act that changes someone forever. Growing up without a father.

• 

Cynthia listens intently as Trey, a burly teen with glasses, stands to read. She'd seen another student pick on this shy boy, but hadn't known he'd experienced worse.

"If school is supposed to be safe, then why did I get jumped?" Trey read. "Why can't you look inside instead of out? Why do you have to look perfect to not be made fun of?"

"Trey's blooming, isn't he?" Galbraith says to the class. "Everyone, give a round of applause to Trey," says Cynthia.

As class ends, Heather says that writing "lets people know why I am the way I am. When I read it, I felt like releasing everything."

David confesses that "me not writing is just not me no more."

Galbraith, still sitting in the back of the room, praises his students for sharing so much.

"You get the feeling people shed tears when they sat down at the computer," he says. "Those are the kinds of strings I'm trying to hit... .

"To live with the shame or the feeling that you're not wanted because of who you are, a lot of people experience that, not just because of your race or color but just negotiating being a teenager. I hope you guys will continue to go deep with this."

ONLINE EXTRA

For multimedia shows of David Leal reading his "I am from..." essay and teacher Michael Galbraith discussing the transformation of his class, go to http://go.philly.com/writing