McDaniel College’s first-year students are encouraged to read a critically acclaimed book over the summer to prepare for meaningful conversations on the book during the next academic year. The summer reading is also linked closely with many orientation activities and continues to be incorporated throughout the student’s first year seminar.

This year students and faculty worked with the Summer Reading Committee to vote on the Fall 2011 reading.  The Class of 2015, their advisors, Peer Mentors, and Resident Assistants will read:

The Freedom Writers Diary

Erin Gruwell is a first-year English teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. Although she was a student teacher at Wilson High the year before, this year she would teach on her own. Not only would she teach on her own, as a teacher with little to no seniority, she was given the "unteachable" students, those who are more concerned with gang activity and matters of "turf," rather than the study of Shakespeare, subjects and predicates. More information >>

Product Information:
Paperback: 292 pages
Publisher: Broadway (October 12, 1999)
ISBN-10: 038549422X
ISBN-13: 978-0385494229

Watch a short video from Erin Gruwell (the author of Freedom Writer's Diary).