Freedom Writer Teachers Paul Smith and Angie Schultz sign copies of their just-released book. Smith taught at Guernsey for 13 years (83-96) before moving to a position in Lincoln, Nebraska and Schultz is the English at the Youth ChalleNGe program at Camp Guernsey.

In 2007, 150 teachers from across the country gathered in California for the Freedom Writers Institute to hear and learn first-hand about the story of Erin Gruwell, the teacher who wrote The Freedom Writers Diary, a New York Times bestseller that chronicled her experiences in reaching out to teach students who faced enormous odds in their daily lives while trying to earn a high school diploma. A teacher from Wyoming’s Youth ChalleNGe at Camp Guernsey and a former Guernsey-Sunrise High School English teacher were among those who attended.

And now, Angie Schultz and Paul Smith have helped author the book Teaching Hope, based on the stories of those 150 teachers who have since taken Gruwell’s methods back to their own schools.

Gruwell’s story was the basis for the 2007 motion picture Freedom Writers, that starred Hilary Swank and Scott Glenn. The title is a play on both the terms of Freedom Riders, the black and white civil rights activists who tested the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of interstate buses in 1961 and Freedom Fighters, as in someone who fights for freedom.

On Monday evening, Schultz and Smith were in Guernsey to sign copies of the book they helped write.

Both spent about an hour talking to the group about their experiences as Freedom Writers Teachers and most specifically about the personal thought and emotion that went into each contribution.

Both spoke of the differences in how America’s students learn, yet emphasized the fact that most students are the same, regardless of where they are raised.

A more in-depth article will be forthcoming concerning the Freedom Writer Teachers, their book and their experience.