Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/creative-writing-programs/)
Recently, at one of the writing workshops that I teach at three juvenile lockups in and around my hometown of St. Louis, one of my students posed a provocative question: “Why should I write about changing the world when the world doesn’t care about me?”
ANNISTON, Ala. — Mercy Pilkington’s classroom, at first glance, seems like any other in the nation’s public school system. Novels penned by John Steinbeck and Harper Lee are stacked over a U-shaped row of cubicles. The walls are lined with laminated posters; crayon-colored cutouts of chubby red robins and lime-green pigs are pasted on the room’s sole window. Pilkington, 39, has taught for 11 years.