Part 2: Life without a father - 03/21/2007

Students learn that others have suffered in the same way.

By Susan Snyder, Inquirer Staff Writer

Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Jones has never told his classmates - or anyone else - how he feels about his father. Like nearly a third of the students, Benjamin has had little contact with the man who gave him life. Now, he's put down the words in his diary, but can't muster the courage to read them.

Part 3: After the trigger is pulled - 03/21/2007

By Susan Snyder, Inquirer Staff Writer

In a lecture room at Temple University Hospital, a color slide flashes on the screen: It's a close-up of a throat slashed open, the windpipe still visible in the bloody scene. Cynthia Vega, 13, whose eighth-grade class is studying violence and writing about it in diaries, looks down and begins to cry and rock in her seat.

Part 4: In the steps of a victim - 03/21/2007

Student gives voice to a victim

By Susan Snyder , Inquirer Staff Writer

Eighth grader Naibria Reid sits next to her teacher on the school steps, practicing her speech about a 23-year-old murder victim. She's written it in the first person, as if she were the woman who died.

Part 5: Surprise endings on the final day - 03/21/2007

As students finish diary entries for the year, they look to the future.

By Susan Snyder, Inquirer Staff Writer

Thirteen-year-old Jeremiah Robinson has a surprise for his teacher, "a big surprise." "Not heart-attack or stroke surprise," the short, solemn teen insists. "I will read today," Jeremiah announces.

On the Web - 03/21/2007

More information on the Freedom Writers Diary Erin Gruwell, the California teacher who pioneered the Freedom Writers Diary project in the mid-1990s, has started an organization to help other schools launch similar programs. See her website at www.gruwellproject.org

Another student writing project Students at Frankford High School wrote a book, What We Want to Tell You, including stories about their lives.

Writing your own story The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary is doing The Autobiography Project, in which more than 300 people from schools and other places wrote the stories of their lives in 300 words or less.