Description
Book SynopsisTold with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, All Day recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson''s classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City''s Rikers Island. A poet and actress who had done occasional poetry workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill-prepared for a full-time stint teaching a full GED curriculum program for the incarcerated youth. For the first time faced with full days teaching the rambunctious, hyper, and fragile adolescent inmates, Ms. P comes to understand the essence of her predominantly Black and Latino students as she attempts not only to educate them, but to instill them with a sense of self-worth long stripped from their lives.
I have quite a spirited group of drama kings, court jesters, flyboy gangsters, tricksters, and wannabe pimps all in my charge, all up in my face, to educate, Peterson discovers. Corralling this motley crew of bad-news bears to do any lesson is like runni
