

Engaging teenagers in writing
The challenge was this: how to get a group of fourteen to eighteen-year old boys, all of whom had been through the court system in New York City and had now landed at Andrew Glover, a program for at-risk juvenile offenders, to write something. I knew it wouldn’t be easy because anything that smacks of schooling is problematic for these kids, many of whom have a history of academic failure, not because they’re not smart but because in many cases the system has failed them. I w