Going Inside Out
If you aren’t familiar with The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, you should be. It is a unique, ingenious method of bringing “real life” inside carceral spaces and introducing the community to life inside those spaces.
Oh. And a lot of college-level-rigor goes on as well.
Here’s how it works (in a nutshell): educators and community leaders engage in a week-long training to understand the pedagogical methods, processes, etc of teaching inside a prison. A partnering University offers an Inside Out course in which their students can enroll. A partnering correctional facility recruits students for the same class from their population. The class commences…with “inside” and “outside” students engaging, together, as learners, inside the facility. The outside students may be meeting more often at the university, but there’s a final project that teams of learners are doing together, so even while they may not be in class as often as their outside peers, the inside students are reading, researching, and doing assignments.
From an outside perspective, it lets your community through your prison doors and allows them to see that while it’s a structured environment, it’s a humane one, one in which the people who are confined there are encouraged to grow and better themselves. I hope that’s what they see, anyway. If not, we need to talk. ; ) The most common response from outside students and instructors that I hear during and after a course is that the experience impacted them profoundly. Seeing that we, as human beings, have more in common than not, and being in a situation to explore those commonalities through education is indeed profound.
Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? Well, it is!
Watching these classes on the inside is pure joy. I see inside students rising to college-rigor expectations, working alongside university students who are learning, struggling with the material, having aha moments, just like their incarcerated peers. Read that one more time…peers. Beyond the academic value of the coursework and projects, for this brief moment in time, incarcerated students forget they’re incarcerated students and are just…students…humans…learners. It’s a feeling they carry with them throughout their lives, a sense of “I’m worthy, I contribute, I’m a part of my community.” Can’t beat that, really.
Safety and security questions? I’ve never seen an incident, serious or otherwise, occur during these classes or because of them. If anything, they help develop individuals who are vested in taking more responsibility for their behavior than the other way around. It’s a win for the incarcerated student, the facility staff, the correctional agency, the university, the instructor, the university students…ok. Win/win/win/to infinity. You get the picture.
To learn more about The National Inside Out Prison Exchange Program, click here. They have expanded services as well, ways in which you can get involved, and their origin story sorta rocks.
Want to talk to us here at Past the Edges about this and other innovations in correctional education or education in alternative settings? Contact us and we’ll chat.
Hope you’re enjoying your Sunday Morning Coffee (or your drink of choice). Tally ho!
