I think the profound poet G talked about change and our story is really about change uh about an ordinary teacher an ordinary teacher who had an extraordinary experience with 150 students students who hated reading students who hated writing and most importantly they hated me this perky annoying teacher wearing polka dots and Pearls who walked into their class and wanted to give them a voice and they looked at me and they sized me up with my white polka dots and my white pearls and this perceived white privilege and they were miserable and they made their sole
mission to make me as miserable as they were because when they sized me up and down they thought there's no way in the world that this woman from from Newport Beach can understand in the pit of her stomach what it feels like to be hungry she probably has 500 pairs of shoes she probably drives a brand new car she obviously doesn't come from where we come from and my student stereotypes obviously don't take into account that teachers don't make any money but to their credit I decided that I wanted to give my students an opportunity
and in walked on that very first day that fateful day a young girl and she was not carrying a shiny Red Apple like my father had predicted before I made that 45-minute commute to school instead at the age of 14 a nth grader she walked into my classroom with an ankle monitor around her leg and a probation officer I looked at her sitting in the back of my classroom throwing up her gang signs carving her initials in a desk and I realized that this young girl had never read a book from cover to cover nor
did she intend to and so when I decided that I would give my students a voice specifically her and gave her a journal I remember picking up the journal after that first writing assignment and she simply wrote I hate Aron guell I hate Aaron guell and if I wasn't on probation I would probably Shanker well grew up in Suburbia I didn't even know what shanking was I just knew it wasn't good so I decided to give her an opportunity to tell her story to stand in front of a room full of her so-called enemies and
to tell her story and it began at the tragic age of five and when you think of 5 years old you think of kids going up to kindergarten with hopes and dreams and learning ABCs and one 123s but by the time this little girl was 5 years old she hadd already been to more funerals than birthday parties and she took us back to a moment a moment in time when she was standing at a bus stop hoping she could go off and and learn those ABCs and one two threes and be an American dream a
dream that her family never actualized how could they they were poor they were immigrants and her father had these illusions of grandeur at the age of 11 that he was going to be a professional boxer the next Muhammad Ali but rather than join that local gym at the age of 11 he joined that local gang and for the the rest of her childhood was in and out of Jael cells Maria went on to tell us this class wrapped with attention that her mother was only 7 years old and in second grade when she dropped out
of school at home taking care of brothers and sisters by the time she was 15 she was pregnant and by the time she was in her early 20s she had three little babies a tiny one-bedroom apartment and a husband that was in and out of the slammer so at the age of five Maria watched her mother get up at the crack of dawn and go and clean these big beautiful homes in these fancy communities big beautiful homes that she realized even at the age of five were never going to live in and then she would
watch her mom go off to these big fancy hotels and scrub toilets big fancy hotels she realized were never going to stay in and then she would watch her mom work her fingers to the bones in these sweat shops down in East LA wearing beautiful clothes realizing my mama is never going to wear those clothes so at the age of five armed with a box of crayons and these hopes and dreams Maria was going to go to kindergarten and as she was standing at that bus stop with the weight of the world on her shoulders
she saw her cousin and her cousin was this Superman this this robot this this person that could come in and swoop in and make her feel safe he could make her feel safe when her dad was in jail he could heat up food in the microwave when her mom was working that third job and he told her stories stories about knights in shining armor stories about little girls like Maria being whisked off on a white horse stories it always ended with the good guy always makes it so what Maria saw was somebody who was larger
than life her night and shine armor and then she saw something she saw what he was wearing it didn't even register to her she could care less about those baggy pants that shaved head that wife beat her t-shirt those tattoos and then she saw him get shot five times in the back and as he was lying in a pool of blood a pool of blood that looked like a melted Cherry popsicle Maria kept wondering and wishing when is he going to jump up because that's what happens in cartoons and in fairy tales the good guy
always makes it and at the age of five Maria realized that sometimes sometimes the good guy doesn't make it and I wondered how this little girl had the courage to make her way out to kindergarten and try to learn those ABCs and those one 123s when she didn't even know what post-traumatic stress disorder was but what she did know at the tender age of five was I'm different different I look different and I talk different and when I raise my hand what comes out is a combination of English and Spanish this Spanglish and people are
laughing at me and she said the person who laughed the loudest and the longest on that very first day was a teacher a woman with chalk in her hand at a chalkboard so at the tender age of five Maria learned her first valuable lesson in school that it is easier to make people laugh with you than at you it's easier to be a bully it's easier to be a Class Clown it is is easier to be in on that joke so Maria Rees gave up on that teacher gave up on that classroom and gave up
on education and her father ironically became her teacher he came home from Twin Towers jail and he bought his little girl a present she will never forget and it wasn't a Barbie doll it wasn't a book about green eggs and ham it wasn't a bicycle with fringe on the handlebars but he bought his five-year-old daughter these shiny red boxing gloves and he told her with no uncertain terms that life is tough and when it knocks you down you better get back up swinging so at the age of five Maria learned how to swing first and
to swing fast how to keep a step up her lip never show her weakness in public never cry because if she started she may never stop and most importantly don't you rat or snitch on a homeboy so when Maria Reyes watched her father get handcuffed again and taken off to Maximum Security Prison San Quinton at that moment that was her teacher and she wanted to follow in his foot steps she could care less about those number two pencils those standardized tests she could care less about fancy schools like yo she cared about places like jail
and so by the time she was 11 years old and in sixth grade Maria Reyes just like her daddy and her granddaddy before that got jumped into a gang and by the time she walked into my classroom at the age of 14 she had already been to boot camp and a juvenile hall again and again and again well I wanted to give Maria and 149 others an opportunity for a second chance an opportunity to to put down that fist to put down that gun to put down that spray can and to pick up a pin
and maybe they couldn't change that cast of characters they were dealt but maybe they could rewrite their story maybe they could rewrite their own ending so I decided to have my students pick up a a plastic champagne glass filled with sparkling apple cider and starting right then right now it didn't matter that Maria had been kicked out of every school she ever attend it didn't matter that she had a05 GPA maybe she could pick up that plastic champagne glass field with sparkling apple cider and talk about for the first time in her life reading a
book from cover to cover not going to the internet and downloading somebody else's paper not getting the cliff notes not getting the movie at the video store but picking up a book A book written by and for and about a little girl a little girl in an attic who would look out her window and watch her friends being let off like she to slaughter well when I gave Maria the opportunity to pick up that book and to rewrite her ending at first it wasn't so easy so she picked up that plastic champagne glass and she
got very serious and it wasn't about a book it wasn't about that number two pencil but she simply said I don't want to be pregnant by the time I turned 15 like my mother and I don't want to spend the rest of my life Behind Bars Like My Daddy and I don't want to be 6 feet under by the time I turn 18 like like my cousin I want to change so for a brief moment I'd like to introduce you to Maria I'd like to have the profound effect that a book and a little girl
in an attic had on her and I'd like to have a glimpse in the world of change possibility and promise I think they got swept up in that moment not realizing that there was this academic component attached to it which was okay now you have to read these books and I think Maria of of all she was Furious because I think she felt I had tricked her that she was very excited about changing she just didn't want to read a book to to have to prove to me that she could change she became the Benchmark
for reading this book because she truly did not want to read it in her mind an Frank was not Latina an Frank did not come from the hood an Frank did not speak Spanish an Frank didn't live in Long Beach I took the book and uh I went home and um I was still in house arrest so it's not like I could go do other things there's a picture in the front that looked all of you know 12 uh I looked at that picture and there is nothing that I could relate to but with nothing
else to do uh I opened this stupid book because in the back of my mind I thought that I was going to prove M girl wrong she would come back every day and she would ask questions about and kind of in in in Ju opposition to her gangster mentality and you know Maria was in a gang then Anne Frank had to have a posi you know I rever my father and Anne Frank reveres her father and sometimes my mom drives me crazy and so does Anne Frank's mom so every day was this kind of ping
pong and and based on her questions and how they all had this like kind of like gangster Twist on it I I realized that she's actually reading it started getting interesting when things started going bad that's when I thought okay maybe she's not this spoiled little girl that I thought she was maybe she doesn't have a perfect little life and that's actually when I took a liking to her I came to the entry where she's describing this window her only connection to the outside world she couldn't even put her hand outside because one of the
gapo or somebody would know that they were in hiding and then this bird lands close to her um to the tree and outside the window and she writes um sometimes I feel like a bird in a cage and I wish I could fly away I was able to relate to that feeling of knowing the outside world and only having this certain connection to it and from that on I knew she was going to make it she had to make it she was going to make it because why else would we be reading this book and
she's going to make it because she's a good person and she hasn't done anything wrong Ria came in one day stormed in and threw the book across the classroom and said why didn't you tell me and I was kind of taking it back and I said tell you what and she said why didn't you tell me that Anne dies at the very end when she doesn't make it I felt that disappointment that I felt every other time in my life when I really believed in something it was that same feeling of going to the window
and waiting hoping that my father was going to come home and he didn't uh every feeling of disappointment all of a sudden came crashing together at that moment because I so desperately wanted her to make it because if she didn't make it then what were the the chances of somebody like me that was a bad person actually making it out I felt horrible I I felt horrible because I just assumed that that maybe she had known that that I I just assumed that everyone knew that Anne Frank was this iconic figure of this tragedy and
the fact that Maria didn't know it it was devastating to her and then and and thus became devastating to me because I I never wanted to to take away my students hope and then something serendipitous happened Darius stood up and he said she did make it she did make it Maria because she wrote about it and then he went on to say how many of our friends have died and we've never even read an obituary but because Anne Frank wrote about it she's going to go on living even after her death the power the power
of words and the power of stories and the power of a little girl in a tiny little attic who had the courage to to put her feelings and her hopes and her dreams on paper gave a little girl who did not believe in crying who did not believe in the in the rules of school or that crazy English teacher with those polka dots and pearls and for the first time she was able to to rewrite her ending to give a voice to the voiceless and most importantly hope to the Hopeless and she wrote a letter
along with 149 others and like a message in a bottle they sent it across the globe to this tiny little woman this tiny little woman who had been a secretary of Otto Frank so for two years she would sneak into that tiny little attic and bring in paper and pens and food and books but most importantly she snuck in hope that someday an Frank and those seven others would make it out and like these cries for help 100 50 students asked this tiny little woman to fly across the globe and come and meet 150 gangsters
it's that simple well I realized it's not that simple but they imagined and they dream big and they thought when she picks up those letters she's going to see something in us that she saw in Anne Frank and she did this tiny little woman that was 87 years old picked up 150 letters and even though there was typos and and grammar mistakes I have to believe that she saw something in my students students like Maria that she did see in an promise and potential and hope and so when she flew across the globe to meet
150 kids regardless of the color of their skin the side of the street they grew up on what their parents did or more importantly didn't do I realized that their lives would never be the same and on that morning before she came it was like the MTV Music Awards we did not have a red carpet we did not have moonmen and JLo and Diddy did not return our phone calls but in their absence my students were going to treat her as if she was royalty and in the distance I saw Maria this tiny little girl
he would wear this ankle monitor every day and her pants were sagging and for the first time she was this Vision she looked like it was her kinetta and as she came closer I realized she was holding on to something like it was a prize possession I just assumed it was one of her faux purses one day it was coach the next day it was Louis Vuitton but in this particular day it wasn't a purse it was a book a $4.99 book that was ripped and torn because she threw it across the room and tried
to hit me and she came up to me with this book The The Diary of Anne Frank and she simply said Miss G is there any way that we can read this book in Spanish and I said sure honey how come and she said because my mama wants to read about the little girl that changed my life and change she did and starting at that moment Maria Rees and 149 other kids found themselves found themselves in the pages of a book found themselves in the pages of history and began to follow in the footsteps of
Anne Frank they wrote their story they said it off like a message in a bottle we called it the the little book that could and the freedom writer's diary changed their lives and has changed kids across the country so I'm a big dreamer of hope I'm a big believer in kids finding their opportunity to tell what needs to be told and to stand in a stage where a young girl by the name of g a slam pone could stand before you and be a poet be a prophet and be someone that aligns us all gives
me hope in The Power of Words and the power of change so thank you but
