She also talked to their teacher Erin Gruwell, a first year teacher who had been given 'unteachable/at risk students'.

They told her their stories, stories of abuse, homelessness, addiction, and alcoholism both in their families and themselves. In David Bowie's song Heroes he said 'We can be Heroes, just for one day.' But for Miep Geis the former secretary to Otto Frank who hid him and his family in the Netherlands during WWII after she read letters from a 150 kids out in Long Beach California after the LA riots that were loaded with spelling mistakes and grammar errors, she learned like their teacher what courage was.