D303 teachers get motivational speech from 'Freedom Writers'

St. Charles Unit District 303 teachers earned some freedom from thoughts of state test scores with an inspirational visit from "Freedom Writers" Erin Gruwell and Maria Reyes on Friday.

Gruwell and Reyes had their lives depicted by the 2007 film, "Freedom Writers," starring Hilary Swank. The film is an account of how Gruwell inspired her impoverished students, whom everyone else had given up on, to change their thinking, gain self-esteem and apply themselves in school.

"We're not going to teach to a test," Gruwell told an audience of all of the district's teachers. "We're going to teach to a kid."

Gruwell told teachers even the students with the most difficult home lives or problems with learning can be reached by relating material to what students experience in their everyday lives; make the learning about who they are rather than what a syllabus requires.

"Every single kid that walks through your door, they, too, have something to say," Gruwell said. "I don't want you to think about numbers and graphs and pie charts. I want you to remember kids."

Reyes, depicted by the character "Eva" in the film, then let teachers know the power they have to destroy a student if they just assume a child is incapable of learning something.

"You all belong to a system that always made me feel inadequate just for who I was," Reyes said. "I wasn't as stupid as test scores would like you to think. Never underestimate the power that you have as a teacher. (Gruwell) made a difference in my life because she made me believe that education was the way that I was going to correct my thinking and my behavior. Be that guiding light when your students don't know where to go."