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Movie Concept - Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers is a movie based on real stories of teenagers from a high school in Long Beach, California who were impacted by violence but found hope through their teacher Erin Gruwell. The movie depicts the different types of conflict these students faced and how Gruwell used concepts like social learning and Maslow's hierarchy of needs to help them believe in themselves. It shows how field trips to a Holocaust museum and conversations with survivors supported social learning. Additionally, Gruwell created a safe classroom environment to help students meet basic needs and feel a sense of belonging before helping them reach their full potential.

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280 views1 page

Movie Concept - Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers is a movie based on real stories of teenagers from a high school in Long Beach, California who were impacted by violence but found hope through their teacher Erin Gruwell. The movie depicts the different types of conflict these students faced and how Gruwell used concepts like social learning and Maslow's hierarchy of needs to help them believe in themselves. It shows how field trips to a Holocaust museum and conversations with survivors supported social learning. Additionally, Gruwell created a safe classroom environment to help students meet basic needs and feel a sense of belonging before helping them reach their full potential.

Uploaded by

api-547292340
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Bethany Dorsey

Movie Concept – Freedom Writers


Freedom Writers is a movie based off of real stories from a class of teenagers from Woodrow
Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. These teenagers were raised in a war and carried
it into the halls of their school. All this changed when a teacher, Erin Gruwell, used
Organizational Behavioral concepts to attempt to understand their situation and encourage these
students into believing they could be more. Some of the concepts utilized were different types of
conflict, social learning, self-efficacy, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Freedom Writers is filled with kinds of different conflict. It starts with a new teacher coming
into a classroom with at risk youths. Their first day of school is filled with dysfunctional
conflict and people fighting over playing football and old shoes. This scene is an example of
dysfunctional conflict because it impedes the rest of the class from experiencing their first day
of school peacefully. Later in the movie there is process conflict between the head of the
English department, Margaret Campbell, and Mrs. Gruwell. Mrs. Gruwell is has finally found
something that might interest her students and Ms. Campbell refuses to give her the books that
could help engage and enlighten the students out of fear that they will be damaged or not
returned. While Mr. Campbell offers the old, torn, and condensed version of Romeo and Juliet to
Mrs. Gruwell, representing the conflict in their process of teaching, Mrs. Gruwell has to find
another way to get the books to motivate the students. The last conflict I want to mention is the
relationship conflict between Erin Gruwell and her husband. She is so dedicated helping these
students that she doesn’t realize how her relationship at home is slowly unraveling. There are
small issues at the beginning, and it leads to bigger arguments and him not agreeing with her
doing all this extra work and eventually he leaves her.

Another important concept used in this movie is social learning. The students all learn about the
Holocaust by touring a museum. The museum has clips, interviews, and is interactive in a way
that you get a card with someone who was alive in that time and by the end of the tour you find
out what happened to them. There are also guest speakers invited to dinner with the students
after their trip to the museum and they are directly involved in conversing with these people and
listening to what they experienced. Because they are involved in these conversations first-hand,
it is making them more invested in learning about the situation and what these people went
through.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs plays a big role in Freedom Writers as well. It starts with the
physiological need they have for a place to go where the war they are experiencing every day
isn’t at the forefront of their minds. Mrs. Gruwell turns the classroom into a safe neutral zone for
these students to grow and learn which satisfies the second level of the pyramid. Once they have
that safe place the students start to get acquainted with each other they start to feel as if they
belong and they realize they are all going through the same things. After these are met, the
students start to have more self-esteem. They are more positive, inspired, and have the self-
actualization that leads to them having the drive to put on a bunch of different fundraisers to get
Miep Gies to come speak for them at school.

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