In a library room with bare shelves, Lynn Zwerling dumped balls of yarn, needles and scissors onto two folding tables and sat down to knit with her class. A new student entered the room: peach fuzz on his chin, temple fade haircut, wearing a gray Department of Corrections sweater. As he sat across from his 20 classmates, Reggie Della, 55, told him to “pick up some yarn and needles. Then you can be a knitting homie, too.”

At Dorsey Run Correctional Facility in Jessup, one of the most popular recreational programs is a weekly Thursday afternoon knitting class created by Zwerling, 69, designed to teach more than two dozen inmates discipline, empathy, patience and a professional work ethic through the slow, quiet practice of turning balls of yarn into colorful creations.

For the instructors and the students, it’s more than just another activity to help prisoners pass away the weeks, months and years.

“This isn’t about knitting. This is resocialization,” said Zwerling, who created the program after picking up the practice soon after she retired.

To help impart life lessons, Zwerling and her co-teachers structure the class with exacting rules: To be a member, every student must sign an attendance sheet to encourage accountability. Profanity, racial slurs, off-color jokes and nicknames are prohibited. Students are banned if they break any of the rules, and the men are prohibited from missing three classes in a row unless they are sick or observing a religious holiday.

“They appreciate being more than a number or a nickname,” Zwerling said. “They appreciate us learning their individuality. They like the civility of the group.”

And perhaps the last rule is one of the most important: Every new classmate must tell someone they’ve hurt or disappointed about their weekly practice and eventually knit that person a hat. “I’m going to tell my mother,” said a young student, whose name wasn’t cleared for publication by the facility.

In many cases, Zwerling is the closest thing to a maternal figure the students have at Dorsey Run, a minimum-security federal prison of 500 men. Indeed, part of the program’s intent is to instill a sense of giving. The hats Zwerling’s students make are donated to a nearby charity and Baltimore City public school students every winter.