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“If you talk to people who work in alternative education, there’s across the board understanding that you have to work with the whole person,” Pierce said. “It’s not about saving kids. It’s about working together to evolve.”
Pierce’s vision is to build a true alternative program for students at CALC, not just a space students go to make up credits. In her two years at the school, Pierce said she’s worked to make changes in curriculum, increase options and hold her students to high academic standards and expectations.
That vision has been in part shaped by Pierce’s own experience as a published poet.
The oldest of five siblings, Pierce, 34, grew up in rural Massachusetts. She’s loved writing and reading, and considered herself a poet, since childhood. She remembers taking a book to birthday parties, prompting her parents to tell her she couldn’t read for the day. But then she’d go to her hidden book stash in the bathroom.
“I was the kid who got grounded from reading,” she said. “There was something really powerful in naming myself a poet.”
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