The Caged Bird Sings

Well here we are, at the end of the semester.  What a perfect time for a culminating reflection!

 I have to say that before this project I never really liked blogs or understood their purpose.  Why would I want to read other people’s self-published opinions and rantings?  Thus going into the blogging part of this class, I was a bit skeptical.  But after 16 weeks of writing a blog and reading others, my opinions have changed…a little.

I now understand the usefulness of blogs.  One insight I gained was how helpful blogs can be in creating a web of news articles that would otherwise be lost in the fray of the web (Google Reader helped with this too).  I never would have thought I would be commenting on a story from the local newspaper of a town across the country.  The other aspect of blogging I now appreciate is that it makes you write for an audience.  It turns writing into much more than an assignment because random people could be reading your post and linking to your post on their blogs.  In a sense this is intimidating, but it also forces someone to write more carefully.  I can see this being very useful in a future classroom.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is I still don’t like writing a blog.  It’s just not my thing.  For one, I don’t like spending the amount of time on the internet that is required for keeping a decent blog.  Another reason I don’t like blogging is that I’m not one to readily voice my opinion or start an argument with someone over theirs, which seems to be an important part of out-of-classroom blogging.  For these reasons I don’t plan on keeping this blog.

In terms of my topic, I learned much more about prison education than I thought I would.  Reading articles from around the world on the topic has made me more aware of the problems and the hope that exists for such programs.  Perhaps with this new interest I can become involved in a prison library someday.  At the very least, I have a better understanding and respect for what people working in such programs do.

And with that, I’m out.  Thank you for reading.

“Reading Parents Overseas”

“Faculty Breakdown” 

“Fantastic Finns” 

“It’s Not A New Thing”

“1984 At Its Best” 

“Alternative School To Receive Overhaul” 

“5 Year High School Programs” 

“Dr. Diaphanous…” 

“No Teacher Left Behind” 

“The First…” 

After all of the articles and posts about how important prison education, I finally came across some legislation to talk about.  I’m referring to the Second Chance Act of 2007 which was recently passed in a unanimous Senate vote. 

The article from reentrypolicy.org titled “3/11/2008: Senate Passes Second Chance Act” summarizes the Act.

“The Second Chance Act includes key elements of President Bush’s Prisoner Reentry Initiative, announced in the 2004 State of the Union address, which provides for community and faith-based organizations to deliver mentoring and transitional services. The bill will also help connect people released from prison and jail to mental health and substance abuse treatment, expand job training and placement services, and facilitate transitional housing and case management services.”

I’m excited about this Act because it addresses the major goal of prisoner education, successful reentry into society.  This blog has only dealt with prison education, not other topics such as substance abuse, transitional housing, etc., but all of these blogs are inseparably connected. 

Not only does this Act help to provide thorough support for prisoner reentry, it also saves taxpayers money (another common theme among my posts).

“According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 95 percent of all state prisoners will be released—with half of these individuals expected to return to prison within three years for the commission of a new crime or violation of their conditions of release. This cycle of recidivism not only compromises public safety, but also increases taxpayer spending. A February 2007 report from The Pew Charitable Trusts stated that if federal, state, and local policies and practices do not change, taxpayers are expected to pay as much as $27.5 billion on prisons alone from 2007 to 2011 on top of current corrections spending.”

Perhaps it was this report that finally got the wheels turning on this Act which, as stated above, was essentially announced in 2004.  Clearly there is a benefit to taxpayers, and this is especially important during a time when there are many other things to spend taxpayer money on.

It seems appropriate that my last article-based post is about the Senate passing legislation to help prisoners.  All semester I’ve been reading blogs and articles about individuals and small groups who are working to help prisoners gain an education and reduce the likelihood of reentry.  It’s refreshing to see some legislation come through that will in theory assist such people and groups.  It is also excited that the vote was passed unanimously.  Clearly this shows that there is an interest in the matter.  Hopefully the Second Chance Act will be able to accomplish all the aid that it promises.

The whole article can be found here.

Here’s a touching story from a prison librarian’s blog. 

The post is a short one titled “Family Literacy in a Prison.”  It doesn’t contain any scholarly quotes or stats.  It’s not loaded with potential for argument.  Basically, it could easily be passed over in the blogging community.  But it really struck me and I felt the need to share it.

Family literacy day is apparently when the children of inmates come to the prison to read with their incarcerated parent.  This is a highly important part of a prison reading program and library which I had never thought of.  Most of the time you hear about inmates reading to study for a GED or to reevaluate their case, but this only focuses on one aspect of the prisoner’s life: their incarceration.  Many prisoners have families at home living without a mother or a father, and it can be difficult to connect with the families in the usual prison visitation setting.  The post points out the importance of this uncommon interaction.

In many cases it was the first time that they had ever read to and with their children.  Of the program, one inmate said “It couldn’t get any righter than this.”

Not only does family literacy day allow the prisoners to connect with their family in an intimate and traditional way, it also promotes literacy among the children of the incarcerated.  Some of the most important times for a child learning to read is when they are reading with their parent, and if their parent happens to be in prison they may miss out on this opportunity.  This is a great program that allows for this interaction to take place. 

Another topic that this little post brings to light is that these prisoners are people too.  Most stories about prison education talk about prisoners looking to bring their cases back to trial or gain a GED.  I could imagine many taxpayers would wonder why they should have to pay so that some prisoner can relearn what they should have in high school.  But I doubt any taxpayer would deny a prisoner the opportunity to read to their child.

Prison libraries serve important purposed which are not always evident in the media, and this post reminds us of that.

The full post can be found here.

Today I went to the Bright Ideas Conference held at MSU.  I had to get up early and decipher Michigan’s strange road signs and MSU’s equally strange directions (I-69 East is apparently I-69 North in MSU-land), but overall the experience was beneficial.

The first session I attended was called “Why Use Technology? Exploring New Literacies” hosted by Carlin Borsheim. Basically this session was an overview of all of the different technologies which can be utilized in the classroom.  Tools covered included Wikis, Google Documents, Podcasts, etc.  I had already learned about most of these tools in my Technology in Education class (except for Google Docs, I now see their usefulness when writing a group paper).  So in that respect this session was really just a refresher for me.  It wasn’t until Carlin Borsheim introduced the idea of “new literacies” that I became really intrigued.  “New literacies” refers to all of the new genres and literatures that come from these new technologies.  By using the tools which were presented, a teacher can either help her students become more literate in the “languages” of wikis, podcasting, etc., or connect with students who are already literate in such areas.

The second session which I attended was “Social Networking, Teacher Education, and English Language Arts” by Robert Rozema and Troy Hicks.  This session discussed both the potential conveniences and potential hazards of using a social networking site in a class.  Obviously there are risks when a teacher gets onto a social networking site; it can be a strange intrusion into the students’ social world.  Because of this many teachers shy away from using such technology.  But this session really did a good job at showing alternative social networking sites and their potential utility.  I had never really thought about how a social networking site can create a community of teachers, new and experienced, who can discuss lesson plans, teaching methods, and other important education techniques.  After attending this session, I’m excited to become an active member of such a social network.  Another interesting point which came out of this session was an answer to my question, “How long are social networks going to be around?”  The presenters suggested that they will be around much longer than other technology trends because they serve to aggregate all of the “failed” trends into one place where their usefulness can be fully utilized.  Maybe I shouldn’t give up on Facebook just yet….

The final session which I attended was “Integrating the English Language Arts through Dramatic Literature” by Samantha Caughlan.  This session was different because it didn’t deal with using technology, but it did present some “bright ideas” on how to teach drama effectively.  Ms. Caughlan suggested that students take on the view of an actor, a director, and a designer when reading a play.  These different views have different goals but they all force the students to read the texts critically and think a lot about what they are supposed to be seeing through the text of a play.  Ms. Caughlin said she has her students put on a quick performance of a scene or two to display their research and views.  The only thing I didn’t like about this session was the way it was presented.  The topic was really very interesting, but the basic Powerpoint presentation wasn’t a very captivating medium.

I actually got a lot more out of this experience than I thought I would.  I’ve been to conferences before that just feel like another staff meeting, but Bright Ideas wasn’t like this at all.  I learned many new ideas that are very applicable to a classroom setting.  I would recommend anyone looking into English teaching (or any teaching for that matter) to check out the Bright Ideas Conference.

Today I came across an article that raised two interesting points.  The article is “Jail’s education program a bright spot for inmates, if they want it” from the Crookston Daily Times by Natalie J. Ostgaard. 

 One point that caught my attention in this article was what it said about inmates reading in prison.

 ”It never ceases to amaze me how people from jail, even if they haven’t looked at a book in five years, when they’re here they become avid readers,” said Rudh. “We certainly want to encourage that.”

 
This reminded me of my cousin, who, when he was in jail for a period of time, started reading things like Lord of the Flies, John Grisham, and poetry.  This was completely out of the ordinary for anyone in his family, and they asked him what his sudden fascination with reading was.  His response was simply, “There’s nothing else to do, so why not?”  As strange as it seems this made me think that being in jail provides a great educational opportunity quite simply because there are no distractions.  Unless you want to sit around bored to death, you’ve got to pick up something to read.  It’s one of the only permitted forms of entertainment.  This seems like a fertile ground for teaching, if proper opportunities are present.

 This “nothing better to do” attitude also relates to the topic of my last two posts, which is the question of why we should even worry about providing prisons and jails with books and education programs.  If these opportunities aren’t provided, then suddenly there becomes a large portion of the community (yes, they still are a part of the community) literally doing nothing.  At least with some reading and education there is some progress happening in society.

 The second interesting point from the article is the statistics of people with learning disabilities in jail.

 Rudh noted that other statistics are “quite astounding. We’ve estimated that about 90 percent of our students are learning disabled or can’t read. Now, we’re not suggesting that if everyone can read, we’d obliterate crime. But both national and state reports show education in jail reduces recidivism.”

 That’s a pretty staggering statistic, 90 percent.  This really makes me wonder if there is some correlation between learning disabilities and ending up in jail.  Whether their learning disability has something to do with their incarceration or not I’m not sure, but it certainly seems like the two could be connected.  For instance, if someone cannot read then they cannot very easily get a job.  So what do they do?  Resort to some sort of crime, perhaps.

 This only furthers the statements from my last post that say early childhood education is an important way to prevent crime down the road.

Another implication of this statistic is that there needs to be some specialized teachers in these settings in order for the inmates to benefit.  As I have said before, the prison and jail education program seems like a fruitful job market that isn’t often discussed.  And, as is indicated by this article, it is important to have trained professionals assisting these learning disabled people instead of random volunteers (though they are helpful as well).

Overall, I think the education program this particular jail has set up could be a model for other jails.  As the article states, there are very few jail education programs, making this program all the more special.  To read more about it the full article can be found here.

“Jail’s education program a bright spot for inmates, if they want it”

Natalie J. Ostgaard, Crookston Daily Times 2-26-2008

Here’s a kind of different approach to talking about prison reading programs…

The Ionia Sentinel had an article entitled “Raising funds, literacy; Imagination Library” by Frank Konkel which discusses the importance of early childhood reading programs.  The article discusses a library program run by The Dolly Parton Imagination Library which provides reading material for young readers.  Now, you may be asking, “What does Dolly Parton and some elementary students have to do with prison education?”  Well, I asked myself the same thing when Google Reader delivered this article to me.  But what I discovered is that they truly are related.

One point the article makes is that increasing literacy in young children works as great preventative action in keeping them away from criminal activity.

 “What I’ve seen in my 31 years, most children who act out are frustrated learners. In this day and age, you’ve got to have good reading skills, and if you don’t, then you’ll struggle,” Kjolhede said. “Even mathematics is reading intensive these days. If a teenager isn’t doing well in school they have a tendency to bail out because it’s easier to fail in the eye of a teenager than it is to go to class and get Es because they can’t read.”

Community members are backing the program, too. Both Judge Robert Sykes and Ionia County Sheriff Dwain Dennis said the judicial system and law enforcement are taking a proactive - rather than a reactive - stance on crime.

Clearly improving literacy at a young age can prevent criminal activity, and I think that much of the public would feel the same way too.  Of course taxpayers and donors would give money to literacy programs for young children, especially if it can help prevent criminal activity.

So, to relate this story to my blog topic, perhaps children’s literacy programs could be used to boost funding for prison literacy and education programs.  It may seem like a strange idea, to couple young children and inmates in a funding program, but I think it would help prison libraries get funding.  This article gave me the idea of having something like a community-wide literacy fundraiser or event, similar to what was done at the Dolly Parton Library.  The proceeds from such a fundraiser could then be dispersed throughout the community, including prison libraries. 

As I discussed in my previous post, I could imagine it would be hard to get the public to donate a lot of money to prison education programs.  But this article helps to show that its possible if it is marketed correctly.  The article states that donors have no problem investing money because they see it as an investment with a high return.

 Businesses, industries and corporations are all potential donators and could provide excellent long-term, tax-deductible funding solutions for the imagination library. What’s more, Kjolhede said, is that it’s an investment that makes a guaranteed return.

“Research shows that by investing in early childhood education, governments in partnership with private firms and non-profit foundations can reach extraordinarily high economic returns,” said Kjolhede. “The benefits are low risk and long-lived.”

When people feel that they are improving their community by increasing literacy, they are more willing to give.  So why not show that literacy programs in prison and for children essentially have the same outcome: a better community.  If literacy can prevent young people from resorting to crime, it seems logical to say that increased literacy can prevent prisoners from resorting to crime again. 

Another benefit of combining the research on the benefits of literacy and a fundraiser for community-wide literacy is that it helps ease people’s tensions about giving money to a prison program.  If they don’t like the idea of doing that, they can always feel good about the fact that their money is going to a number of places in the community (including the children) along with the prison.

Perhaps this different way of looking at donating to prison funding could yield more fruitful results when it comes to increasing prison education program budgets.

The whole article can be found here.

Raising funds, literacy: Imagination Library

By: Frank Konkel, Ionia Sentinel-Standard  2-25-08

Today I found an article that is so full of discussion potential that I will probably save it for some sort of critical pedagogy project (perhaps the idea where students write from different perspectives of the people involved). The article (which can be found here) is called “A Matter of Prison Degrees” from The Daily Iowan written by Terry McCoy. McCoy writes about ways of using technology to give inmates an education and, more importantly, the issue of funding such technology.

Initially this article caught my attention because of the interesting way it showed the use of long distance learning technologies in prison

Scores of men mill about the courtyard, talking and taking refuge from a rhythmic rain. Around them, towering brick walls rim the yard and deliver a message as inescapable as their presence: No one in, no one out.

In a room upstairs, two televisions flicker on. Three men walk in and sit down at a desk before a three-microphone setup. They’re dressed in denim - like prisoners.

From nearly 40 miles away, the signal comes, bounding over the walls from a world these men haven’t seen in years….

And then, as simply as that, college begins at the Anamosa State Penitentiary.

This seems like a great idea for getting educational opportunities to inmates who otherwise wouldn’t be able to have them.  It also serves as a way to get teachers to teach inmates.  If teachers are uneasy about teaching in a prison, using long distance education tools keeps the teacher feeling safe and thus possibly more willing to take on such jobs.

However, the problem with long distance education in prisons is that it is a method of teaching which requires fairly up to date technology; technology which may not fit into the budget.

But this network, some professors and prison officials fear, may be only putting off what could be an inevitable end to higher education in prison. With teachers on the outside requiring more Internet use and the state Legislature continually downsizing its prison education budget, it’s becoming much more difficult to earn collegiate degrees behind bars.

This issue raises some interesting discussion topics.  For instance, one could ask why the budget cannot be expanded to meet these inmates needs for long distance learning.  Or, on the other side of the argument, one could ask why the state feels it needs to provide education to its incarcerated citizens in the first place.  It’s one thing to give them some old books and a part time teacher, but it is quite a different thing to provide them with state of the art technology.  I have a feeling that if taxpayers were told that more of their taxes was going to be put towards giving incarcerated citizens a decent education, they would probably take on the second opinion.

McCoy’s article makes an interesting point concerning the question of why we should even care about providing inmates with an education.

This sharp decrease in funding seems counterintuitive to prison’s primary goal -to correct convict behavior. Recidivism studies agree: The more education prisoners receive while incarcerated, the less likely they’ll be back.

On average, education in prison reduces recidivism by nearly 10 percent, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections found in 2001. Monetarily, every dollar spent on education returns more than two to the state, the study concluded.

This means if Iowa had had no funding, 163 more men would have been readmitted to a state penitentiary during 2007, according to a *Daily Iowan* analysis of Iowa prison records. The state pays $80 per day per inmate in incarceration costs.

“It’s expensive to incarcerate folks,” said state Sen. Tom Hancock, D-Epworth, the chairman of the justice system appropriations subcommittee.

This is an important point to take into account.  Would the cost of providing inmates with an education be less than the cost of keeping them in prison over and over again?  If so, then the answer seems obvious.  But I think there is another factor in the question of funding prison education programs: the public’s opinion of those incarcerated.

The popular notion of inmates is that they are all murderers, rapists, etc (an idea that McCoy only furthers when she writes that distance learning “connects killer, kidnappers, and thieves with the realm of thought”).  While this is certainly true about some people in the prison system, I feel there are also those in prison who are there based on foolish mistakes which they regret.  Perhaps society would be better off spending the money to get these people an education, if not for the greater good than certainly for the financial aspect of one less prisoner to pay for.  However, I feel that the public’s perception  of those incarcerated may be too biased or stereotyped for people to back the funding of such programs, however beneficial they may be.

A Matter of Prison Degrees by Terry McCoy, The Daily Iowan, 2-25-08

I came across an interesting article today about inmates from Ofek Prison learning about the Holocaust and taking tours of Holocaust museums. This article caught my interest for two reasons. One reason is that it discusses what inmates can learn from studying subjects such as history. The other reason is the idea of taking prisoners on field trips.

From the few articles and blogs that I’ve read, it seems like a lot of prison education programs focus on studying for high school equivalency certificates or basic law. The idea behind studying these subjects seems to be that these are the essentials that the prisoners will need to enter society. There is not denying the importance of studying such subjects, but I feel there can also be value found in studying topics such as history. The article supports this idea when it states:

‘”Even in suffering one can hang in there and remain human,” says Folman-Raban. “It’s important for me to convey that to prisoners, to give them strength, hope and understanding that even from the worst situations they can emerge and build a new life.”

The idea of studying the Holocaust to give prisoners the feeling that they can fight through their struggles is an intriguing one. Some may say that knowledge of the Holocaust is not essential, and thus funding should not be spent on educating prisoners about it. But clearly there is value in studying history, especially an event as important as the Holocaust. There are certain “life lessons” which can be taken from studying history, as Folman-Raban notes above. One of the prisoners also expressed such an interest in learning valuable lessons from studying history when he said, “I was glad of the opportunity to study the Holocaust. Going into prison this time was the end of the world for me. This project has exposed me to the horrors of war and I’ve learned a lot about survival and the spiritual fortitude that helps you through the hard times,”

The other topic I wanted to address with this article is taking prisoners on field trips. Obviously the idea of driving prisoners around town, unrestrained as they were in this instance, will not bode well for certain people. The possibility of a breakout is raised and there are a lot of innocent people around if something were to go wrong. Such fears were expressed in this article.

“On November 2006 the first group of inmates from Ofek Prison visited the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum. “Two days earlier Benny Sela escaped from the Tel Aviv court parking lot and we almost canceled the tour,” Sabiti says.”

However, this article also discusses the benefits of allowing the prisoners to walk around the museum in regular clothes and no handcuffs.

“‘There were fears that prisoners might try to escape and that the project would be slammed, but I insisted on going through with it and in taking the prisoners to the museum without handcuffs or prison uniforms. I wanted to give them a feeling of freedom for one day and to enrich their knowledge.’

“After hearing Folman-Raban’s story, the prisoners, dressed in jeans and white T-shirts, are taken through the museum with a guide.

“‘Today they are very curious, excited, attentive and well-mannered,’ says Sigal Nir, Tzalmon Prison’s education officer, watching the convicts on a break outside the museum.”

As this article shows, allowing inmates a certain amount of freedom along with their educational experience can enhance their learning and give them some confidence. If the inmates were to walk around in uniforms and handcuffs, the educational experience would probably feel more like punishment than an opportunity.

I think that such “field trip” programs to study something other than law, personal finance, and high school equivalency can be greatly beneficial for inmates, as this article shows.

-Mark

“Prisoners escape for one day to learn about the Holocaust”
By Vered Lee, Haaretz Correspondent
Full article available at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/948101.html

Today my Google Reader account (the glorious device that it is) delivered an interesting story from the Cincinnati Enquirer. The article is entitled “In jail, learning counts,” and it deals with inmates passing the GED exam at the Hamilton County jail. There is a lot dealing with the confidence that inmates gain by having their GED and the ways that their education prepares them for going back into society. But the most interesting part of this articles was when it said:

     “The program is unique among Ohio jail-based programs in that it uses full-time teachers and is operated by the sheriff’s office rather than an outside agency.”

According to the article, the Hamilton County jail has a very high rate of success when it comes to passing the GED (83%), and part of the reason is the unique structure of the program. Part of that uniqueness, as is said in the quote above, is that the program uses full-time teachers.

This was of great interest to me, living in an area of the country that has a surplus of teachers and very few teaching positions, because it implies a whole new source of teaching positions which isn’t often discussed. Helping prison/jail inmates pass their GED would be a very rewarding experience for a number of teachers. And given the numbers of people entering the jail system, it seems as if there would be a great need for teachers in such positions.

I’m not familiar with how many prison and jail programs already have such programs, but based on this article they seem to be fairly rare. All of this has got me thinking of how beneficial implanting more of these programs would be for the education community as a whole. There would be more job opportunities for teachers, and a large community would be receiving a desperately needed education. Perhaps there could even be some sort of reward program where student loans could be lessened if one chose to teach in a jail or prison. Of course, with the idea of increasing such programs comes the problem of increasing taxes. But that’s a whole different problem.

I could imagine a number of teacher certified college graduates being wary of teaching in a jail of prison. Such students are dealing with many more issues than your average high school student. But this article addressed such fears.

     “There are challenges, teachers said. Some students have deep physical or emotional wounds. Some have learning disabilities. And they’ve all made some mistakes.
‘We know where we’re at; we’re not naive and think they’re all sweet angels,’ said teacher Cassandra Jeter. But sometimes it provides some humor, she said, smiling as she recalled how a student offered to teach her how to shoplift as thanks for the instruction.
‘I always say if I get locked in here (the classroom) I’ll just call my students to get me out!’ Jeter joked.
The teachers, though, look at the students as humans, not criminals.
‘The ones you see in the paper and in mug shots are completely different people,’ Jeter said.”

Clearly teaching in jails and prisons can be a highly rewarding job opportunity. I think that education programs should discuss such jobs as real possibilities and possibly even offer courses dealing with teaching in such environments. Of course, that is all contingent on how many of these programs exist or will be formed, but it is an idea worth looking into.

The whole article can be found here.