First, I want to thank all my friends and readers for their kind comments and words of support.  As some of you may know, head injuries hurt a whoooole lot.  It touches me greatly that you thought enough of me to come by and leave a word.  It really cheered my heart and soul.

This will be a smaller blog than usual — the fall left not only my head but my whole body very sore and I cannot yet sit at my desk and type, so I am borrowing my sister and her fingers (she types faster than I do anyway)..

I’ve not been able to take pain medication for this, so last night when the pain was particularly bad, to distract myself, I decided to watch a movie on my iPad.  The movie I chose was called The Freedom Writer’s Diaries.

There is a book and there is the movie.  I was absolutely blown away by this true story of a young woman who became a teacher and changed the lives of her class.  She taught these particular children, in their Freshmen and Sophomore years of high school.  The school had voluntarily decided to desegregate, combining the former upper and upper-middle class white students with poorer students of many diverse ethnicities, many of whom came from neighborhoods where gang violence and domestic violence were the norm, and where many families had at least one family member in prison.  In her class, there was only one white boy.

These kids all had a boredom with learning, a lack of respect for each other and their teachers and, mostly, for themselves.  None of the children trusted the others who were ‘different’.

It’s the story of how she used the Holocaust and the words from The Diary of Anne Frank  to get through to these kids, to teach them that they were more alike than different, and to teach them what a hero is.

It is a wonderful example of putting light and understanding into the world. It is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, and I highly recommend it.