Teacher receives Freedom Writers Institute training
LONG BEACH — In her 15 years as an educator, Yulil Alonso-Garza has attended numerous development workshops and seminars, but none to date have provided as memorable a professional and personal experience as her participation with the Freedom Writers Institute.
For the past five days, the Enrique Camarena Junior High School English teacher has been taking part in the institute’s teachers training program, which is aimed at helping teachers further develop methods to keep students engaged in the classroom.
“It’s so dynamic, diverse and amazing that it’s hard to put into words and describe it,” Alonso-Garza said. “It has to be lived and experienced.”
Her completion of the training has earned Alonso-Garza the designation of a Freedom Writers Teacher, the first in the Imperial Valley.
Alonso-Garza’s participation comes two years after she had first gotten a personal invitation to attend from Erin Gruwell, who developed novel teaching methods — later to become the model for the Freedom Writers curriculum — as a way to reach at-risk Long Beach high school students in the mid-1990s.
In Gruwell’s case, those teaching methods helped inspire her students, many of whom had developed an indifference toward their education and their peers as a result of the constant presence of violence, poverty, discrimination and drugs in their lives.
In Alonso-Garza’s case, the curriculum further promotes the principles of conflict resolution and tolerance that form the foundation of the Mothers and Men Against Gangs Coalition that she founded in 2013 following the stabbing death of her son Martin Alberto Garza.
Far from strictly being a stodgy developmental workshop, the five-day FWI training in Long Beach has given Alonso-Garza reason to dance, laugh and cry with a diverse cohort of 24 other participants.
“I think they knew I needed this healing,” she said. “God sent them my way.”
Alonso-Garza said she had first met Gruwell in 2015 during a trip to the University of California, Irvine campus to hear her speak during a screening of the “Freedom Writers: Stories From an Undeclared War” documentary.
Following that initial introduction, Gruwell and another FWI representative had reached out to Alonso-Garza in subsequent years to urge her to apply for the training program, something not to common for the highly competitive program.
On both occasions, the ongoing trial of the El Centro gang member accused of fatally stabbing her popular 17-year-old son had prevented Alonso-Garza from attending, she said.
Yet, long before her recent training, Alonso-Garza had already adopted several components of the Freedom Writers curriculum, such as having students make journal entries and openly delve into the unfortunate personal circumstances that often restrict students from being fully engaged in academics.
Last summer, Alonso-Garza had gotten the “epic opportunity” to work with local Upward Bound students at Imperial Valley College, where she was able to implement additional parts of the Freedom Writers curriculum.
“That was my first opportunity to really take in the whole curriculum and apply it,” Alonso-Garza said. “This curriculum is not just for students that are on the wrong path.”
Upon her return from Long Beach this week, Alonso-Garza said she has plans to meet with her supervisors to identify ways that her recent training can be further implemented in the classroom.
Those plans also include identifying at-risk students who can be exposed to the Freedom Writers curriculum and methodology to help them make the right choices when faced with everyday difficult decision-making, said Calexico Unified School District Superintendent Maria Ambriz.
Doing so, Ambriz said, should further help those students reinforce skills that will translate into academic success for them.
Future plans also include possibly having FW teachers and supporters pay a visit to the Valley to further help transform students’ quality of life through education. Already, Alonso-Garza said she has some prospective teachers and speakers lined up.
“That for me was so powerful,” she said, “to know that they are going to be there.”
As someone who has been victimized by brutal acts of violence in the past, Alonso-Garza said she feels it her personal responsibility to help others in the community find some sense of justice and normalcy, as well as identity.
Too often, Alonso-Garza said, youth will attempt to resolve conflict with violence or behavior that furthers promotes discrimination, both of which often result in disastrous outcomes.
Her previous efforts with the MAG Coalition, and now with the Freedom Writers, have sought to address those issues and promote tolerance, understanding and academic engagement.
“I have an unfortunate platform that may help make this story a little deeper,” she said.