Question: Build a movie plot around this: What does Gruwell take two part-time jobs to pay for? more books
Answer:
Woodrow Wilson is a formerly high-achieving school which has encountered some difficulties bearing its new racial integration plan. In 1992, in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Erin Gruwell, an enthusiastic young teacher starts at the school. Her enthusiasm is challenged when she finds her class is composed of "at-risk" students, the "untouchables," and not the eager-for-college students she expected. Her students self-segregate into racial groups within the classroom. This is problematic, as gang fights break out and, consequently, most of her students stop attending class. Not only is Gruwell challenged with gaining her students' trust on personal and academic levels, but she must do so with very little support from her professional peers and district higher-ups. For example, her department head refuses to provide Gruwell with an adequate number of books for her class because she insists they will get damaged and lost. Instead, she suggests that Gruwell focuses on instilling concepts of discipline and obedience in her classroom.One night, two high school students, Eva (April Lee Hernandez), a Latino-American girl and narrator for much of the film, and a Cambodian refugee, Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan), frequent the same convenience store. An additional student, Grant Rice (Armand Jones), an African-American boy is frustrated at losing an arcade game and demands a refund from the store owner. When he storms out, Eva's boyfriend Paco, as retaliation for losing a fight against Grant that took place earlier during a gang fight at Woodrow Wilson, attempts a drive-by shooting, intending to kill Grant but misses, accidentally killing Sindy's boyfriend. As a witness, Eva must testify at court; she intends to guard "her own" in her testimony.At school, Gruwell intercepts a racist drawing by one of her high school students and utilizes it to teach them about the Holocaust. She gradually begins to earn their trust and buys them composition books to record their diaries, in which they talk about their experiences of...