After watching the 1992 Los Angeles riots on news coverage, she decided to change her profession to a teacher because she believed educating students could make more of a difference.

Erin Gruwell - Wikipedia Erin Gruwell - Wikipedia

When one of her students asked her what the Holocaust was, she was met by uncomprehending looks—none of her students had heard of one of the defining moments of the 20th century. She graduated from Bonita High School in La Verne, California, and the University of California, Irvine, where she received the Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Alumni Award. In 1998, after teaching for only four years, Gruwell left Wilson High School and became a Distinguished Teacher in Residence at California State University, Long Beach. Gruwell took the students to see Schindler's List, bought new books out of her own pocket and invited guest speakers. One student, a boy named Sharaud, had recently transferred to Wilson from a rival high school where he had allegedly threatened his teacher with a gun.

Writing journals became a solace for many of the students, and because the journals were shared anonymously, teenagers who once refused to speak to someone of a different race became like a family. But Gruwell persevered and reached her students by asking them to keep journals and make movies of their lives, and by relating the family feud in Romeo and Juliet to a gang war. Erin Gruwell was born in Glendora, California to Stephen Douglass Gruwell, a formal baseball scout for the Anaheim Angels, and Sandra Faye Alley.

She earned her master's degree and teaching credentials from California State University, Long Beach, where she was honored as Distinguished Alumna by the School of Education.

She also had the students read books written by and about other teenagers in times of war, such as The Diary of a Young Girl, Zlata's Diary and Night. She reasoned, "I thought, God, by the time you're defending a kid in the courtroom, the battle's already lost.

She has also worked regularly with the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and even the U. In the fall of 1995, Gruwell gave each of her students a bag full of new books and had them make a toast for change. However, a few months into the school year, one of her other students passed a note depicting Sharaud (an African American) with large lips.