Out & About: Family Compass North Star Luncheon
The fifth-annual North Star luncheon recently raised more than $175,000 for Family Compass.
Erin Gruwell, the teacher, author, and activist whose unique teaching philosophy led to the publication of The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them in 1999, was the featured speaker at the April 24 event at the Dallas Country Club. Gruwell first gained national attention in 1998 when she and her 150 students appeared on an ABC special “Prime Time Live with Connie Chung.
”Gruwell told the luncheon crowd of 310 about her beginnings as a first-year teacher in Long Beach, California.“After the Los Angeles riots, in the city of Long Beach, there were 126 murders, and so it was not uncommon for the teenagers who would walk in my room to have buried a friend or a father, a niece or a nephew, and to feel like they had a bulls-eye on their chest,” Gruwell said. “I realized I had to take my students out of my classroom, out of our school, and out of our bubble, and introduce them to the world.”
She recalled having her students play the line game in hopes of fostering connection and reading books as a class like The Diary of Anne Frank.
“My hope was if we played this game that we could see each other in a way that we hadn’t seen each other before. As the bell rang and they left, one of my students said, ‘I feel like I come from an undeclared war zone,’ and I thought about kids who actually lived in … wars, and it took me to Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel, who wrote Night, and a young girl in Bosnia Herzegovina who had just written a story about the genocide in Sarajevo.”
At one point, she invited Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis during World War II, to speak to her class.
“There is someone in this very community at this very time who needs you, who needs to be seen, who needs to be heard, who needs to know that they matter,” Gruwell said. “And that’s what this tiny little woman did for us … she saw them, and she heard them, and she made them believe that they matter.”
Gruwell also spoke about the 2007 movie Freedom Writers, being portrayed on screen by Hilary Swank, and joked about her father’s suggestions that Jack Nicholson or Robert Redford should portray him in the movie.
“When I had the opportunity to be asked, ‘Who do you want to play you?’ I actually chose Hilary Swank because she could have been one of my students, and she could have been someone who was served by Family Compass,” Gruwell said.
Before Gruwell took the stage at the event, co-chaired by Brooke Bailey and Elizabeth Dacus and emceed by Calvert Collins-Bratton, Family Compass CEO Ona Foster presented the North Star Award to Mark Holmes, a board member of the child abuse prevention organization as well as a member of the Exchange Club of Lake Highlands.
“Today, we honor the Exchange Club of Lake Highlands in particular because not only do they talk the talk, but they have walked the walk alongside us,” Foster said. “This partnership over the years has made an enormous impact, not only on the agency but specifically on the children and parents that we serve.”
“Preventing child abuse is one of the most important responsibilities we have as a society. Every child deserves to grow up in a safe and nurturing environment, free from violence and neglect,” Foster added.
The next North Star luncheon is set for April 29, 2024.
