I know you’re reading this and thinking, “Part I?? How many lessons is this guy going to try to feed us on being a teacher in prison?”, but please rest assured, there’s only three parts, and I’m going to cover my learnings from three different perspectives – the instructor, the class and students, and the community. Each perspective describes different costs (in time, work, resources, etc) and benefits (interactions, knowledge, relationships, etc) to taking the time to teach and/or lead an Adult Continuing Education (ACE) class in prison, and hopefully will give any of you aspiring instructors out there some insights into what you might be getting yourself into.
So what made me want to teach a class, much less one on Creative Writing (my first ACE class upon arriving at my institution)? Over my lifetime, I’ve had many opportunities to stand up in front of a group and present information or lead discussions, and I’ve always enjoyed interacting and learning from the students in my courses. I had heard prior to reporting to prison that teaching classes is a good way to meet other inmates and establish yourself in the community, so teaching was one of the first things I had planned on doing here. My institution has a great Education department and the inmates working on the ACE program were very welcoming and helpful in guiding me through the process and potential difficulties of teaching courses here in prison. We discussed my academic background in order to mine for potential subjects to teach, as well as the educational resources that the institution had available on a variety of topics, and I landed on something that I have done throughout my life – writing.
So here is the first major learning – make sure that you have the resources available to cover your curriculum. Some instuctors order in their materials and create their presentations from scratch. I’ve always checked the lending and reference libraries for textbooks or subject books related to my planned topic. Thus far, I’ve taught Creative Writing, Public Speaking, and Intro to Psychology (some of these topics multiple times) at my institution, and I’ve been lucky to find a large number of advice books on the first two topics, and a few textbooks on the last topic to use as references/resources when teaching. In the absence of resources, it’s too easy to flounder and end up looking unprepared or unknowledgeable in front of your class, and the prison environment is especially unkind to individuals who are not prepared for what they’ve promised to do.
Once you have your materials, it’s important to outline what you’re going to cover as well as the time it will take to get through all of your material. The prison environment is not conducive to a steady schedule and set class lengths. I’ve never been able to have a complete 12-week term (one term I think I had only 8 out of 12 classes due to holidays, compound shut-downs, and other unpredicatable circumstances), so it’s important to be ready to pivot topics and speed up or skip material as needed. In my institution, each course starts with a pre-test and ends with a post-test, so it’s important to make sure everything on the test is covered before the end of the course. The outline also makes sure that you know what’s coming up in the next few classes so you can prepare your own lectures and anticipate any class discussions or questions.
Between the resources and outlines, we come to one of the great benefits that you as the instructor can get from teaching a course – review and preparation of the course materials gives you the opportunity to reinforce your own knowledge of the topic area and keeps your expertise in the area fresh. With this in mind, it can have a huge influence on your topic choices. What topic areas have you loved in your past but haven’t had an opportunity to refresh or read about recently? Where do you have expertise and you’re worried that your skills are slipping due to lack of use or review? Is there an area where you have knowldge but would like to gain more expertise or familiarity? There’s nothing like being in front of a classroom to make you prepare in detail and make sure that you know more than your class does. You never know what you’ll learn from your students either – more on this below.
Another benefit of the research and prep time (as well as the actual teaching time) is something very important to your time in prison – keeping busy. You can usually find enough to do to keep yourself busy (if not, the time drags horribly), and if teaching is a potential interest, it can take up quite a bit of time between getting ready for your class and making yourself available for class time. For the over-100 hours of courses that I’ve taught, I’ve put in evenings and weekends for the classes themselves, and plenty of evenings working on course materials, totalling to much more than 100 hours spent on a honing your knowledge and teaching skills. All of this work is rewarding in it’s own right, making the quicker passage of time a great side benefit.
Lastly, the greatest benefit to me is the opportunity to interact with the students in your class. You never know who will sign up and/or show up for your class. They may be interested in your topic, looking add a few classes to their prison record, or just be bored and looking for something to do. Those who sign up due to the topic can range from those curious about the subject, to those who are more experienced than you are and are looking for a chance to re-engage and maybe chat with someone else in that area. Those who sign up for other reasons often end up getting interested in the topic and can lead to some of the best interactions in the class.
Your studends will most likely come from all sorts of backgrounds and have vastly different reasons for being at your institution, and may end up sharing some of their stories with you and your class over the course of the term. The opportunity to interact with such a wide range of people and the work needed to prepare your course materials to relate to all of them is a great learning opportunity for the instructor, as well as a growth opportunity in terms of adapting to and accepting your environment. I always tell my classes that the most important part of being a teacher for me is the opportunity to learn from my students. There is always something new to be gained from discussing a topic with a new face or from an unexplored direction, and teaching in prison definitely provides those opportunities!
OK, that will cover the first part of this blog, the next section will dive into those student/instructor interactions mentioned above and take a look at what you can add to the community as a teacher. Thanks for reading!
