<span>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. After
that, she saw a turnaround in them. The students went on to surprise everyone.
All 150 Freedom Writers graduated from high school and many went on
to attend college.
The Freedom Writers Diary tells the story of how a teacher and 150
teenagersuUsed writing to change themselves and the world around them. It is a
non-fiction book from 1999 written by TheFreedom Writers, a group of
students from Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, and their
teacher Erin Gruwell.</span>
