Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Welcome to Voices of Development, the podcast amplifying the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people living across development and humanitarian context. Voices of Development is produced by Supernova and hosted by Salome Ponsaluit. Dear listeners, welcome to this new episode of Voices of Development. In the ed sector, we often speak about education as a solution, a way to reduce inequality, prevent violence and change life trajectories. But in many contexts, education systems don't just fail, they adapt to inequality. They sort, they exclude and sometimes they simply reflect the fractures of the society they operate in. So the question is not only whether education can transform lives, it is whether they are willing to challenge the conditions under which it operates. Irene Gruel began teaching in the mid-90s after riots in Los Angeles in a classroom shaped by violence, racial tensions and deeply unequal expectations. Many of her students were already seen as lost by the system itself. What followed? is often told as a story of transformation through writing, storytelling and the reclaiming of voice. But beyond the story, there are harder questions. What does education actually change and what does it leave untouched? What happens in context where instability is ongoing, not past? What is the real role of education when systems collapse? These are questions we are also facing today. In Gaza, Where Supernova and its partner are supporting more than 2,000 children through informal education, education is not just about learning. It is about structure, protection and continuity in the middle of disruption. With Erin, we will explore what education can realistically do in such contexts and where its limits begin. Welcome to this new episode. Hi Erin. Hi, it's an honor to be here. Thank you so much. You start. teaching when the system was failing your students? Was actually them failing or had it simply accepted that they would fail?

• Speaker #1

  It's a provocative question. I learned in America, we had an unspoken reality that many refer to as a school to prison pipeline in communities. that often reflected what I believe is educational apartheid. And so it was a fundamental inequality. It was in areas where there was great poverty and social unrest and racial reckonings, young people feeling like they were warehoused, but not expected to seek higher education. So when I began teaching, I began teaching after we had a horrific riot in Los Angeles and 126 homicides in the very city that I would teach in.

• Speaker #0

  How was the very first day of class? Did you feel at the right place? Did you feel you were on the right path with this instinct that education can change trajectories in the hardest context?

• Speaker #1

  I had an imposter complex. And still do to an extent, which has kept me very grounded and very humble. And I was also very scared. I wanted it to matter. I doubted my choice. I thought I was going to be a social justice lawyer. And I chose to be an educator instead, which I do not regret. But those first few days were very challenging because my students didn't like school. They didn't believe. in the educational system. They didn't embrace me as their teacher. They thought of me as an other, and they thought I would be very punitive, which I was not. But it was, you know, doing the dance of trying to win their trust and their respect, and ultimately use education as a way to empower them.

• Speaker #0

  When you started teaching, what were your understanding? of this youth and what they were living through and where they were living and their conditions of life and is there something working with them on a daily basis that you realize you actually misunderstood and maybe how that paved and shaped your way in the future on education?

• Speaker #1

  I learned a lot about politics and anthropology. and sociology. And ironically, I was an English teacher. I was going to teach stories, but I realized we all have stories. And so many of my students had come from other places. Some of them were seeking refugee status. Some of them had come from countries with genocides like Cambodia. Many of them had come to our country based on either wars or cartels or great poverty, seeking this idea of what they call the American dream. but they didn't actualize the American dream. Many of them had generational trauma because of slavery or how we as a country treated indigenous cultures. So I realized the commonality was they had trauma and triggers and they had learned to push those feelings down and push others away. So I realized that English could be a way to unlock and to right wrongs. And to start telling the world what needed to be told, which felt very liberating and exciting, but also very scary for some of them.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, I guess so. So you were building somehow your approach. What is it exactly? Like, how do you do actually to help those youths open their heart, their mind, maybe regaining confidence also?

• Speaker #1

  Initially, I... found storytellers who had lived through wars, whether it was Anne Frank in her attic, writing about the two years in hiding during the Holocaust. There was a young Bosnian by the name of Zlata Filipovic, who was writing from her basement in Sarajevo. And I started looking for storytellers, whether they were civil rights activists in our own country, or Rwandans. who had fled from a machete during their genocide. And by finding storytellers who use words, not weapons, I wanted to hold a mirror to my students that they also could use words to be a legacy. And even though we did not have a declared war in the streets of California or America, when there's death and there's pain, I wanted to validate that. And so my students actually felt they lived in what they called an undeclared war. And I wanted to give that pain a purpose.

• Speaker #0

  Nice. And so how does youth actually welcome the idea and how did they made it their own at the end of the day?

• Speaker #1

  So I have a mission to find storytellers who survived and could reframe and repurpose a narrative of being a survivor. and not a victim. And that was really empowering. So they met, you know, a Holocaust survivor who went on a death march and survived Auschwitz. They met Bosnians who had survived. And in meeting these different survivors, there was this commonality of voice and sometimes survivor's and also this empowerment that... Evil prevails when the good people do nothing. And so it was a switch of using their voice to say something, to speak up and speak out when they saw injustice. And for a lot of my students, there was a code on the streets. It's called snitches get stitches, which basically encourages you not to say anything. And my students realized silence is just perpetuating. silence. is enabling and we can no longer be complicit. We have to say something when we see something that's wrong. We have to stand up and speak out. And our namesake, Freedom Writers, W-R-I-T-E-R, came from civil rights activists from the 1960s in America during our civil rights reckoning. And there was a group called Freedom Writers, R-I-D-E-R, who rode buses. And in riding buses, it was to fight segregation in our country. Fighting segregation on buses, at lunch counters, movie theaters. drinking fountains. There was such horrible discrimination post-slavery in the Jim Crow laws in America that it was young people who said, we're going to stand up and fight back. This is wrong. And if our country was supposed to be founded on equality,

• Speaker #0

  we have to fight to truly be equal. But I guess it's not easy for young people who've so deep in this culture of silence with obviously like many you Issues supporting this silence culture, I mean, language barrier, street rules, family codes, family cultures, and etc. How did they actually overpass those limits, those barriers, and how did you support them in that? And what's your telling now to the world?

• Speaker #1

  It became therapeutic, almost like therapy. Culturally, these were not students and families who... who sought therapy. But writing can be cathartic. Writing can purge problems. So I wanted my students to realize the commonality of the human spirit and the universality of stories, and to understand they were not alone. I think a lot of people, when they're in their pain, it becomes very isolating and very lonely. And there was this joy. of realizing there are other storytellers who can overcome, and there are other storytellers who can be very heroic, and other storytellers who can overcome obstacles. So it became a way for us to become a family. And becoming a family was very nurturing and healing.

• Speaker #0

  I really do believe that education can change lives, but what it does actually change concretely and what it cannot. change. Between a student who sighs an opportunity, the opportunity is given by the school system, and another who doesn't, what happens?

• Speaker #1

  For me, what was important is for the trajectory of their lives to change. And then my hope was they can go home and teach within the walls of a family and pull others along. It takes one to break a cycle. All of my students became the first, the first to graduate, the first to go to the university, but also the first within a family to encourage others that they too could go back to school, that they too could follow their success. And it's never too late. I love that education is there for all. Whenever you want to attain it, whenever you want to go back to school. So Freedom Rush would have... a father come home from prison and they would encourage their father to go back to school and to get that high school diploma or to seek out, in our country we have what they call community colleges, which is kind of an entry level before you go to the university. So they would encourage their family to go to the community college. And I love that they were able to take the lessons they learned in my class and then they became the teachers themselves. encouraging brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews that education was a way for the entire family legacy to change.

• Speaker #0

  It's amazing the work you're doing with those kids. At the same time here, we are mostly talking about the individuals themselves, like what fall on them. But I believe there's also something that is on the responsibility of the school system. For instance, when I was Working for the United Nations Programme for Development in Tunisia, we conducted an analysis about trust. And with a survey, notably revealed that school is most of the time the first contact between a citizen and the state. And when school fails from the very beginning, the journey of citizens, and especially... Their feeling of belonging to the state and to society is definitely impacted for the rest of their lives. How can we reverse this? Because I have the feeling that for many young people, sometimes school is exclusionary. So how can we reverse that?

• Speaker #1

  It's a great question. And those of us in America right now are grappling with that very question. Because we had a movement where we wanted to embolden people through what we call diversity. inclusion, equity, and oftentimes those words would be known as DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. And it was an attempt to make things more fair, to make things more just, to make people more not only accountable, but accommodating for the beautiful patchwork of our society. Unfortunately, in our new government in America, they have very actively dismantled DEI programs. Not only dismantled, but been very punitive towards NGOs and educational entities who empower DEI as a part of their structure. So it's a message we're now sending to young people that you're not included, you're not wanted, which is devastating when we've done so much work. to progress and we feel like we've taken several steps backwards. So I've really tried to teach my students who are now adults that it's a mission and a mandate to open the door for others and the success that you have had through your writing, through their book, The Freedom Writers Diary, through the success of their film, The Freedom Writers, to shine a light in other dark places, to invite more people to the table. And it may not come from the top, from our government, but it could be a grassroots movement. And I'm just excited in our country when we see people protesting on the street. I'm in Paris now, and I missed out on our No Kings rally in America this week. But I was so excited that so many people had signs and they were out on the streets and letting their voices be heard that we don't believe in. monarchies. We believe in democracy and part of democracy is the civil right of education. We must do better in our country and in countries around the world.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, yeah. It's always so empowering and powerful to see those movements. And at the same time, that's only feasible where you have the minimum of infrastructures around. Like for instance, We operate in Gaza. We... We are lucky to have a partner, Frontline for Peace, that have been funding projects for us. We just reopened the school two days ago. But that's in an environment that is so difficult. And it's for 30 children when actually there are thousands that are outside without any education, but also in horrific conditions. In a context like Gaza today where children are living through ongoing trauma, What can education realistically do? I see now also donors being reluctant to continue funding programs in Gaza because the situation looks so desperate. I understand that, but at the same time, there are still children and people there. So what school and education can do, but what actually it should do, and why we should fund projects on education still, even though the conditions are extremely hard.

• Speaker #1

  It's a great question. I've been so blessed once our book came out and was translated in multiple languages. And the film came out and it was dubbed to travel and to find like-minded people who in their own countries and in their own cities and their own schools wanted to have those connections of empowerment. and we are often drawn... to the most difficult circumstances. In our own country, we like to visit schools in the lowest economic cities. Oftentimes, kids who are incarcerated are behind bars and give them a chance to get out. But in other countries, even here in Paris, I worked in the 19th district when there was social unrest years ago. So I have loved that I've had the opportunity to work in different communities. where there's pain and where kids feel marginalized and ostracized. So I believe that education will solve things if educators and like-minded people are allowed to enlighten and empower young people, whatever their circumstances are, it's the way to rebuild. And part of our studies was looking at the children affected by war. And how do we take that story, make them storytellers, and then write new chapters of their own story, new endings to their own journey. And I've just been really blessed as a a curator of stories, to work with folks from the Sudan, to work with folks from Sierra Leone, to work with folks in both Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. I've just been so lucky to not only work with them, but to go and visit their homelands and see their conditions. And as a non-political person, I realize that education is politicized. And sometimes, sadly, Politicians weaponize education. And in any war, oftentimes people in power go after the most intelligent because they're a threat. They go after the school systems. They go after the authors, the educators, the professors, because they're going to obviously be very outspoken about what's happening. They go after the journalist. And I've seen that. throughout all of these conflicts. And it's terrifying when we try to silence those who have a microphone, those who have a pen in their hand, those who stand in front of a classroom. And I think that's really scary in any erotocracy or any far, far right regime. That's the target. Let's close the school. Let's punish the educators. Let's keep kids out of school. And that's terrifying. schools where they're going to be empowered to make changes and make things different.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, and I'm talking about Gaza, but obviously it can be for other contexts too. I'm just, I'm so afraid, like kids and even like sometimes some babies were born also in the middle of the war, the escalation of violence in Gaza. And for most of them, the only thing that's going to build their childhood is war. And how do we expect those children to in the future play a positive role in this extremely difficult and complex political dialogue if the only thing that they have known is war, hunger and horrific conditions and especially if we have silenced their voice because they are not supported and then they are super affected psychologically and mentally and that the infrastructure were not there anymore. including schools. So I'm very afraid about how they're going to grow up and the kind of actors they're going to become in this extremely complex situation.

• Speaker #1

  You know what I've learned, though, in my class is it's hard to hate who you know. And I realized in Los Angeles, we had so many different rival gangs of different ethnicities. We had the African-American gang that were... The name was the Crips. We had the Mexican cartel, which was the East Side Lagos. We had an Asian gang comprised mostly of Cambodian refugees. They were the TRGs. We had white supremacists who had created their own niche and their own gangs. We had these four ethnicities, four rival gangs, 126 murders in a single city in a single year. So I realized we have to have courageous conversations. We have to get to know each other. We have to realize that we are much more similar than we are different. And for us, it was learning how does somebody who goes through an atrocity not hate? So when we met the manager of the Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabhina, and learned that in his country with Hutus and Tutsis killing each other out of... at a voracious pace of nearly a million in three months, or what Pol Pot did in Cambodia, voraciously killing people with the Khmer Rouge, to go out and find Rwandans who still were joyful, hopeful, and loving. To find Cambodians who had lost their entire family, joyful, hopeful, and loving. To find Holocaust survivors, to find people who would We went to Bosnia and worked with Bosnians who had lost family members. And I think when you could find someone who still can turn on a light in a very dark room, it's all about what is that light going to do? So for all of the children now that are affected by war, you're right, that's their reality, hunger and pain and insecurity and that complex PTSD. not just PTSD, but complex PTSD, how do we love them back to life? How do we become a hope and allow them to have hope themselves? How do we allow them to learn from history so we're not doomed to repeat it? Because we are repeating it now. How do we allow our politicians to be held accountable? I come from a country right now where we are in an inexplicable war, and it wasn't voted on. We are all affected by it, even to come to this conference in Paris. It affected me personally with just the purchasing of an airline ticket because of the gas that is happening to rise every single day. So I feel for the kids in Iran who are scared. I feel for kids anywhere because as a humanitarian, you know, I believe in people. I believe that we are all part of the human race and I want to fight for the most vulnerable in any circumstance in any country. And I think sadly, often our politicians are not driven by the humanistic element. They're driven by power and money and exclusion. And the schools that they went to were exclusionary. The homes that they live in are exclusionary. The friends that they keep are exclusionary. And I'm all about equity and inclusion.

• Speaker #0

  So can you explain a bit more what you do with the foundation?

• Speaker #1

  We try to take our story. of change, of fundamental change, and take it to places where teachers can actually use our book and our story with the sole purpose of getting other kids to write their own story. And that's been the beautiful element of our story. We wrote an incredible new book a few years ago called Dear Freedom Writer, where young people all over the world submitted a letter to my freedom writers about their pain. A young girl in Gaza, a young boy in Israel, in Tel Aviv, a Maori in New Zealand, a refugee that was from Kurdistan who was in Germany, a young girl in India, kids all over the world. And they wrote in about the systems of government in their own countries and how they wanted to make change. The little girl in India wanting to leave the caste system. And the power of these young people writing with reckless abandon and writing with such purpose and passion and wanting to be validated. You know, is my story powerful enough? Is my story worthy of being heard? Is my story worthy of being published? And we kept saying, yes, yes, there's someone out there just like you in Gaza. There's someone just like you in Tel Aviv. There's someone out there who's afraid. And we want to give you that platform. And then... once they wrote the letters, my freedom writers then wrote back because they'd made it to the other side. They no longer have hate in their hearts. They lead with love. And I think that was just part of us trying to make a small solution. In our country, wonderfully, our book became the number one book in America. We've also been banned in America. And so in the same country that has celebrated us. It's the same country that has taken our book out of the hands of students, out of classrooms, out of libraries. So it's made us more vigilant because when you ban something, it just makes people want to read it that much more.

• Speaker #0

  Definitely. Are you still able to distribute it?

• Speaker #1

  Yes. Oh, yes. And I think when we've been criticized, it's been by those same politicians who exclude, those same politicians who want to dismantle. diversity, equity, inclusion, those same politicians who dehumanize and use

• Speaker #0

  value systems of, you know, in our country right now, I'm embarrassed to say that we are, we are taking out parts of history from our own museums. You know, our government does not want people to feel guilty for slavery. We have to understand slavery. We have to understand what we did, not only to slaves that we brought in from Africa, but to the indigenous culture that had its own genocide. And our president wants to take that out of museums. He doesn't want it taught in schools. He wants all of that to be removed from textbooks. So the teachers in America, we are up in arms. How could we take something that is so fundamental to our development as a country? We're just now celebrating our 250th year as a democracy. But the indigenous people have been there for thousands. And so we marginalize and minimize their experience. We've celebrated our own and they're not in isolation. We've got to learn from our past because we are repeating it.

• Speaker #1

  Do you feel sometimes that the battle is lost?

• Speaker #0

  I hope not because 8 million people protested on Saturday. And when I have gone to protest, the beautiful thing is to see shapes and sizes and colors and hues and different ages and professions. It's so joyous. our protests right now especially the series of no king protests, have been so beautiful and happy and joyful. And we've also had, sadly, great loss. We have in our country right now what they call ICE, and ICE has targeted people of color. They don't ask questions. And our country and our legal system is based on innocent until proven guilty. And ICE... They have dark masks, dark clothing, and dark intentions. And they presume everyone is guilty before proven innocent, which is against our fundamental rights. And a poet and a nurse in Minnesota were shot and killed for standing up for others that were vulnerable, for helping their neighbor, for wanting to be there and saying, these are the causes we believe in of democracy. And our own government called them domestic terrorists. a poet who was a mother, and a nurse who worked with veterans. So there's outrage, but I still believe in our country that we can vote, that we can use our voices every day. And so I thank you for allowing me to come and to be a part of this podcast. There was an Olympian here this summer who justifiably had some questions about our country. It was an American that was just questioning. And with good reason. And those Olympians were vilified for having the courage and the conviction to just question. And I think it's really important for all of us to continue to question, to hold our politicians to a higher standard. And so I might get in trouble back in my country, but, you know, I'm an activist.

• Speaker #1

  I hope not. And thank you so much for your testimony. We are... At the end of the interview already, but maybe a last word, what would you say to a child that feels that their voice is not heard? And yeah, what would you say?

• Speaker #0

  To any child in any country that is in a dark place, to find a caring adult who can help them turn on the light and to spread that light. Every child is worthy of love. Every child is worthy of an education. Every child is worthy of human rights, decency and kindness and compassion. And I'm so glad that there are people like yourself and other humanitarians who seek out the darkness to bring light. And I think it's really important for us to help that light come from within. For me, as an educator, it came in a classroom. It came through a pen and a piece of paper. And I think even with as wonderful as technology is, and it is, I think sometimes something like a piece of paper and a pen may seem simple, but it's not. It can become a letter. And that letter can become a message in a bottle. And that message in a bottle can land on any shore, in anyone's hand, for anyone to stand up, speak up, and to say something.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you, Erin. Thank you so much. And congratulations for all the work you're doing. Thank you.

• Speaker #2

  Thank you all for listening to this episode. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Please feel free to share it, comment it and give us five stars on your favorite listening platform. It's an invaluable way for people to get to know us. We are also keen to hear your recommendations. So if there is anyone you'd like to hear on our mic, please let us know. See you soon.