Give Miami Day 2024

I began teaching legal writing to students who are incarcerated with Exchange for Change in 2017. I witnessed the immeasurable impact E4C's programming has on the students involved; but it also changed my life in countless ways.

Almost immediately, the prescribed roles of teacher and student were flipped. I may have been teaching legal writing and advocacy, but in the process, my students were teaching me about humanity, empathy, and understanding. Fast forward to today, and I now taught in three institutions and am currently teaching at Homestead Correctional Institution.

Exchange for Change (E4C) has grown from a single writing class of 17 students at Dade Correctional Institution (DCI) in 2014 to an average of more than 75 classes annually. We enroll nearly 300 students per semester at state prisons, county jails and private juvenile residential centers. Our writing courses range from traditional fiction, non-fiction and poetry to specialty courses, including journalism, writing in Spanish, trauma and recovery, memoir, personal essay, spoken word, literature, screenwriting, an Exchange Class, and my Legal Writing Course. 

My unique course partners my incarcerated writers with my law students. They collaborate with and learn from eachother, pulling from each individual's strengths. They learn about legal writing, and at the same time, the physical and metaphorical bars are broken down, and they learn about humanity. 

Your donations make this possible. Please consider supporting this cause that means so much to me.

With gratitude and love, Shara