Ask the guy who teaches convicts.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Assuming that you also teach outside of the prison…

– How different are your prison classes from the equivalent courses at a regular college? (I assume, for example, that research papers are out – unless the prison has a very good library.) Do you focus more on academic writing, like a regular English comp course would, or do you do something else instead, on the assumption that most of them aren’t going to go on to regular college classes?

– What’s the classroom dynamic like, for lack of a better way of putting it? Does it “feel” like a regular college class, or are you always aware that you’re in a prison?

– What other texts do you read in the lit class?

– Where do convicts get textbooks and other materials? Do they have to buy their own, or do they get them through the prison / the community college / other?

22

Sunrazor, you have the job I would love to have. I started another thread about what I would rather be doing and stated teaching in a prison, without even seeing this thread, been off the dope for the last three days.

Anyway, how did you get your job? Were you a teacher first and the JC offered to let you teach at the prison, or did you go to the prison and apply to teach?

SSG Schwartz

23

Sunrazor, no matter how you look at it, it still takes courage to walk into the prison to teach – especially those first days.

A thousand times yes! I taught teenagers in the inner city. My favorite thing to teach was Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. It was so cool when these kids realized that some things are basic to all human beings from age to age and that they were the main character is “our” town.

Do your students write any poetry?

24

New Beginning

You obviously did not read that last line.

I have moved my role from workshop based training to employment skills training - which is largely classroom based.

Every teacher you ever met, came home after a tough day and berated their learners.

Not every class is like that, actually there were a couple of absentees from that class on the day after, and it was a completely differant group.

My results so far since taking over this role, bearing in mind the abysmal numeracy and literacy levels are 97% pass in Safety, 94% Pass in food safety.

In other words I got close to 700 vocational qualifications since April into the hands of those who have achieved little else in their lives, except prison time.

I reckon no matter what you choose to believe of me, that record speaks for itself.

The qualifications I run are widely recognised, and would in the hands of any other person, be highly likely to lead to job interview.

I should add, I am the one pushing to introduce courses of higher standards to challenge those who can benefit. I am the one who goes to college on evenings to gain higher teaching qualifications.

However, if you think that anything like a majority will ever contribute to society, nope, it won’t happen.

The reoffending rate speaks volumes, they only give it up when they get too old for it.

What these folk will never learn are life skills. I have no illusions whatsoever, there’s a chance I will reach a few of them, the other 80% or so will come back.

How much experience do you have of prisons, or prison education?

Depressing?

25

Well done!

26

No questions, but a thank you for all you do. It’s not an easy job and there are probably more problems and frustrations than successes, but it is work that needs to be done, if only to “catch” those few.

Nursing is not the same as teaching in prison, of course, but some of the aspects overlap: a noncompliant, mostly ignorant population sometimes (often) bent on their own destruction. (I refer to our frequent fliers or homeless populations, but there are some insured, middle class pts who present with the same issues…). The days can be long and the satisfaction nonexistent, but there are moments when we remember why we’re doing this.

27

Sorry I’ve been away – nothing more irritating than some boob who starts a thread and then walks away. This was a tough week for me, getting my master’s thesis outlined, meeting with the professors, getting my reading list together. Rather than try to master a bunch of fancy coding, I’ll go back up-thread and hit “reply” on each of your posts, if that’s okay.

28

We started with 19 in the class, but with early outs, administrative actions and just plain dropout rate, I now have 10, with four weeks to go. That’s about average for most of these class. Early outs are especially poignant – the guys really want to stay in the class but can’t pass up the chance to go to a halfway house or get paroled early. I know I wouldn’t.

There are two guards in the building at all times, and they walk the halls and man a “hub” in the center of the education building. I’m told to never put a student between myself and the phone of the teacher’s desk – I can summon help in ten seconds just by knocking the receiver off of the phone.

All of the students are men – it’s a men’s prison – but, interestingly, many of the full-time teachers and guards (they’re called Corrections Officers or “blue shirts”)are women.

29

The program I teach for is especially for youthful offenders, and all of my students are serving finite terms. They are constantly encouraged by the prison staff to do things that will make it easier for them to fit back into society when they get out. Some of my guys really want to go to college and are getting a head start. The classes they take from me (and two other people who volunteer for this particular program) give them college transcripts recognized by any college or university in Colorado and most others in the country. There is absolutely no distinction, on paper, between these guys and any other college student. their transcripts look just like mine,

There are fewer gates to go through in the minimum security side, but all of the security and safety measures are the same. Not much difference, really – I was told to treat both sides the same so I didn’t get too lax when I go back on the max side.

30

Oh, gosh, where to I start? Some of these guys have pretty scholarly minds, really. I may have said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: But for a moment’s hesitation, or one more deep breath, or even an accident of birth or timing, many of them might be just another guy in college. They’re very smart – they have to be tested by the college to get into the class but, unlike most of our college students, they have to actually excel on the test to be in the class.

There are almost no resources beyond the textbooks they borrow during the course, pads of yellow paper and No. 2 pencils. I have to design the class so they can express their ideas about the texts in short response papers and essay exams. I design my own syllabus, but it meets all of the requirements of the college that runs the program. Except for a few phrases about the Department of Corrections channels, you wouldn’t know my syllabus from any of the others used at the college. There are some challenges, of course – I can’t have any office hours, and my only contact is during class time. But we get the job done.

I never get to establish much of a relationship with any of the guys – in fact, we’re really not encouraged to do that, beyond what it takes to encourage them to participate in class and do well in their studies. In my training it was stressed that we are not to reveal much of our private lives to the students, especially on the max security side, because they are players – that’s why they are in there – and they will play anyone who can get them what they want.

31

Correct me if I’m wrong - but casdave is talking about the English penal system and Sunrazor about the US one. The US incarcerates a lot of people compared to England and I would assume this makes a difference to the number of hardened criminals and therefore casdaves experience

32

From here:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf
"The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 686 per 100,000
of the national population, followed by the Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554),
Kazakhstan (522), Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bahamas (447), Suriname (437) and
Dominica (420).
● However, more than three-fifths of countries (62.5%) have rates below 150 per 100,000. (The
United Kingdom’s rate of 139 per 100,000 of the national population places it above the midpoint
in the World List; it is now the highest among countries of the European Union.)

33

My father was a policeman here in our small town for 35 years, so a lot of my ideas about criminals came from his experiences.

When I hear my students discuss the texts we read, and when I read their response papers, it comes home to me that these guys have the same hopes and dreams the rest of us have. They talk about their children, their wives, their parents and their siblings, all the people in their lives. They have experiences a lot like everyone else’s, but they’ve made some mistakes. I don’t want to minimize their transgressions – they’re in prison, after all, and they don’t get to prison until they’ve blown every other chance to not go there. A lot of the guys in the minimum security area are there for drugs, drug-related stuff like burglary and car theft, drunken driving (repeatedly) and non-violent crimes. These guys are smart enough to take responsibility for what they’ve done. They have a future, or they wouldn’t be in my class.

34

How does one get involved in teaching or volunteering?

35

Interesting question. Actually, security is pretty tight. I can only wear certain non-gang colors (no red, blue or black – pastels and plaids, white, that kind of stuff) I normally carry a cell phone, Zebra pen and pencil set, pen knife and so on. But when I go to the prison, I leave all of that at home. I have shoes with minimal shoelace eyelets and a belt with plastic buckle so I don’t set off the metal detector. When I go in I log in on a sign-in sheet, leave my driver’s license at the check-in desk and put on a pass badge, my hand is stamped with ultra-violet sensitive ink and my briefcase is thoroughly searched. I go through a set of isolation doors (think airlock, but with big, slidng steel and glass doors) and then down a tunnel that goes under the electrified fence. Yup, it’s a lethal fence. Then I walk about 50 yards through the outer yard to another remote-controlled pneumatic steel door that lets me into the inner yard. Then it’s about a quarter-mile hike to the education building, where I get buzzed in by the officer in the building hub, and another log-in. Trustys unlock my classroom and set it up the way I want it and, if I have to use the restroom at any time, one of the officers unlocks the special staff restroom and I’m locked in, but I can exit on my own. The classroom is locked during class and students can go to the restroom only with a special hall pass – kind of like high school only with an armed guard. Going out of the prison is the process in reverse. Hub officers in the education building, yard hub (it oversees all four inner yards) and in the administrative control room are constantly telling each other where we civilians are within the prison. If we fail to show up at the yard doors, tunnel or isolation doors within a reasonable time, people come looking for us.

36

I never forget I’m in a prison. The students themselves are pretty much a reminder of that, but the hardened glass windows, guards in the hallways and locked steel door on the classroom help set the scene, too.

In the lit class we use Perrine’s “Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense” ISBN141300654X for the short fiction and poetry. I also use “Robinson Crusoe” to study the novel and “Antigone” for drama.

The Department of Corrections buys the books used – some of them are pretty battered, but they’re serviceable. All are identical because those in charge of the education program at DOC understand that having different editions of the same book in a classroom leads to frustration.

37

I first applied almost 10 years ago when the prison opened. The junior college provided “contract” teachers with bachelors’ degrees for many classes because DOC couldn’t hire or move enough teachers with masters’ degrees here to fill the programs. I didn’t get hired because of a glitch in the system, but my father and some of my friends did. Gradually, the contractors have been phased out as DOC has filled with enough MAs, but there are still special programs that the college contracts for. One of them is the CYOPP (here’s a link; I should have provided it earlier): https://exdoc.state.co.us/secure/combo2.0.0/ajax/ajax_nodes_contentPreview.php?id=1012 This is the program I teach for.

As a graduate student (almost done!) I’ve taught several classes as an adjunct instructor at the local juco. Because of that, the director of the college’s outreach programs, who runs CYOPP for the prison here, asked me if I’d teach some of the English classes. She has trouble getting instructors, for a variety of reasons. The money’s good, it all counts as teaching experience, and I feel like I’m providing a valuable service few people can or will provide.

38

Another question, if I may. What was the background check like? Did you have to have a clean record? To your knowledge, can some minor crimes be overlooked and a person still get a job teaching?

Thanks for an insightful thread.

SSG Schwartz

39

I don’t teach creative writing – I’m really not qualified for it yet. But I do teach English composition, and my lit class requires students to express their own feelings and thoughts about the texts we read. I get some surprising results from that.

My father, on the other hand, taught creative writing for about five years in this prison, and he has some wonderful stuff he shares with me once in a while. He made copies of some of the good stuff (there was more than you’d think) and still has those copies. As one would imagine, much of what prison inmates write in a writing class centers on how they got where they are. But some of it is very eloquently expressed. Some of it is heart-breaking, especially when they confess knowing how much they’ve screwed up other people’s lives, including their own families, their victims and their victims’ families. One of my dad’s students wrote a story based on the life he imagines his victim might be living if he (the student) had simply gone home after work one day instead of stopping in a bar to drink himself stupid. At one point he wonders whether his own son will ever meet the victim’s son and, if so, what he would say. It’s pretty compelling stuff.

40

It was pretty rigorous. I was told ahead of time by everyone who I know who works for DOC to just be honest. Nobody is perfect, we’ve all made mistakes, and DOC just wants to know about them. I confessed to all four times I’ve ever smoked pot, stealing office supplies from my employer, losing my driver’s license for careless driving when I was a kid, drunken driving (not since I was in my 20s, and I was never stopped) and that time in high school when some friends and I stole an oil drilling bit and left it in the principal’s office. I was so paranoid about being absolutely forthcoming that two days after the interview, when I remembered once being fined because I couldn’t keep my dog at home, I called the DOC interviewer and told her about it. Bless her heart, she didn’t laugh.

I didn’t have to take a polygraph because I’m not actually a DOC employee, but the investigators did contact some of my friends and family members.