The Children's Museum of Houston's 17th annual Parents and Families Luncheon was appropriately chaired by the mother-daughter team of dynamos Suzanna Brener de Stern, Jennifer Stern, and Jessica Stern Meyer.  Held at River Oaks Country Club, 460 gorgeous guest filled the ballroom to help raise $150,000.  Guest speaker Erin Gruell awed all with a brilliant explanation of her teaching methodology and authorship of book turned movie, The Freedom Writers.  

Erin’s story is one of becoming a teacher in a dilapidated neighborhood in Long Beach, California.  She found a way to “reach out” to her otherwise distracted, “delinquent”, and failing students.  Ms. Gruell realized that her students were living in a modern day war zone--gangs, drugs, violence, poverty-- everywhere they looked.  She thought that perhaps they could relate to other children their age who had kept diaries of “life in war”.  This was the panacea for her students’ lack of interest in education.  She gave her class “The Diary of Anne Frank”, “Zlata’s Diary”…and asked them to keep a journal of what was going on THEIR lives.  These journals became a book, “The Freedom Writers Diary”.  Paramount Pictures released "Freedom Writers" in January 2007, a film based on this remarkable story featuring Hilary Swank as Erin.  www.freedomwritersfoundation.org.

In the crowd:  Dr. Juan Stern, Greggory Burke, Susan Plank, Donna Neider Wright, Debbie Festari, Rachel Brown, Diane Lokey Farb, Melissa Mithoff,  Neal Hamil.