Teach With Your Heart pages 1-35

This first section of Teach With Your Heart by Erin Gruwell began the introduction into her establishment into the classroom. It illustrates her shock on the first day, as well as her self-struggles with herself as a teacher and why she chose the profession. Erin was shocked with the visible segregation in the school as well as the lack of attention and labels that her students have received, and recalls her idealism in her young life. Erin starts to try to bring her subject to life to her students, such as bringing them to the Holocaust museum. However, she struggles with resistance from the administration as well as from more experienced teachers.

I thought that some of the tactics that Erin uses are very good ideas, such as moving the problem students to the front of the classroom and trying to separate the cliques. As an inexperienced teacher, I can understand her struggle on the first day of class and well as her longing to connect to her students. It is hard to read this and understand why the older and more experienced teachers act the way that they do, such as the resistance that you see in the piece about Erin trying to bring her student's to the Holocaust museum.