Erin Gruwell quotes:

I have learned that, although I am a good teacher, I am a much better student, and I was blessed to learn valuable lessons from my students on a daily basis. They taught me the importance of teaching to a student - and not to a test.

Writing is powerful. Whether it's a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty International writing letters on behalf of political prisoners, the power of telling stories is usually what causes change.

I am a teacher born and bred, and I believe in the advocacy of teachers. It's a calling. We want our students to feel impassioned and empowered.

Hoping they'd been inspired by the examples of Anne Frank and other teens who had turned negative experiences into something positive by writing about them, I handed out notebooks for my students to journal about their lives. There was some initial resistance. But then the stories poured out of them, full of anger and sadness.

I realized if you can change a classroom, you can change a community, and if you change enough communities you can change the world.

The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering.

Some teachers feel that if they ask for emotional help, they're a failure. But teaching is a team sport.

I believe that all students, when asked to be accountable for their actions and to be socially aware citizens, will become agents for change!

Silence ensures that history repeats itself.

Fights don't solve matters, they just make things worse. (Diary 19)

I grew up in a very progressive family and with a great educational system, and I asked myself, 'Why doesn't everybody have these opportunities for a good education? So why not give back to these kids who didn't grow up with the same privileges I had?'

When you're too robotic and scripted, the students tune you out. So I always tried to use different learning modalities - kinesthetic, auditory, visual, whatever might bring learning to life.

I believe that everyone has a story, and it is important that we encourage all students to tell theirs.

I think a lot of teachers feel like they're teaching to a test. Our response is you teach to a student, you really teach to the kid.

Education is such a noble profession, its a wonderful way to serve.

I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a "label" than of being a human being, that's the way most of us were taught.

Education is such a noble profession, it's a wonderful way to serve.

That's the beauty of education, kids taking lessons out of the classroom and back into their own world where they can positively affect their family, their friends, and their greater community.

It would be easy to become a victim of our circumstances and continue feeling sad, scared or angry; or instead, we could choose to deal with injustice humanely and break the chains of negative thoughts and energies, and not let ourselves sink into it.

I grew up in a very progressive family and with a great educational system, and I asked myself, 'Why doesn't everybody have these opportunities for a good education? So why not give back to these kids who didn't grow up with the same privileges I had?

Don't let the actions of a few determine the way you feel about an entire group. Remember, not all German's were Nazis.

I believe that education is the greatest equalizer; thus, I will continue to fight to equalize the playing field in an educational atmosphere that is not always level!

Writing really evokes empathy in a way very few things can do.

Paying to teach in the trenches was like putting my face through a cutout hole at a carnival while a quarterback threw pies at me. At least with a carnival, I'd see it coming.

I was going to show my kids that no matter what happened with their parents, parole officers and other teachers, I wouldn't give up on them. I let them know it matters to me that you come to class, it matters to me that you try, it matters to me when you succeed.

Ruining is a gift .. it's the way of changing.

Because if they grow up holding on to such terrible feelings, it could lead to another war come time in the future when the fate of the country is in their hands.

It sounds strange, somewhat on the line between irony and absurdity, to think that people would rather label and judge something as significant as each other but completely bypass a peanut. ... World peace is only a dream because people won't allow themselves and others around them to simply be peanuts. We won't allow the color of a man's heart to be the color of his skin, the premise of his beliefs, and his self-worth. We won't allow him to be a peanut, therefore we won't allow ourselves to come to live in harmony. (Diary 18)

No matter what race we are, what ethnic background, sexual orientation, or what views we may have, we are all human. Unfortunately, not all humans see it that way.

It's not enough to be tolerant...now we're finally moving towards the idea of acceptance.

Evil prevails when good people do nothing.

Remember not all Germans were Nazis.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you tell kids they're stupid--directly or indirectly--sooner or later they start to believe it.

Society just doesn't care about young people anymore, even if we are the future.