Let’s Talk Coding…
Welcome back to Sunday Morning Coffee. I hope you have your cup (or cuppa if you’re a tea drinker), and ready to enjoy a peaceful or exciting first-day-of-the-week. This is my first Sunday of a two week break from work, and my second Sunday of not having to go to a government job on Monday. It feels pretty good, gotta admit. Disclaimer: today’s blog title is misleading. I can’t talk coding. I can, however, talk about providing the opportunity for incarcerated students to talk coding…
One of the last programs I administered as a full time executive government official was a partnership with MIT called Brave Behind Bars. It’s a 6 week coding class that pairs each incarcerated student with an MIT doctoral student to introduce basic coding concepts. The end result is a website, completely built by the incarcerated student, and the finale is a public showcase. The students were taking the class with other students from other states, all on a virtual classroom platform. Those students were also incarcerated. Here’s why the program was meaningful, beyond just building a cool website:
The facility was comprised of individuals who were pre-trial, back on a writ, or misdemeanant offenders. In other words, they could be short-timers. Nobody really knows how long they’ll be there. What we do know is that we can’t implement a 6 month course with any guarantee that all of the students will still be there at the end. We make a best guess and pick folks we’re sure will have at least 6 weeks. Jails and detention centers shy away from meaningful programming because they think it’s too difficult to design something for folks who aren’t there for traditional semesters. It’s not like a prison or a public school where you know you have someone all year for four years. But it’s more than doable. I’ve been doing it for years! Everyone who is incarcerated or detained, even in a short-term situation, should have access to skills and knowledge that will help them to be successful when they leave. It takes a little bit of creative thinking, but it’s worth it.
Interacting with students from MIT and from other states normalized the experience. It felt ‘real.’ It brought real life in the free world inside the walls and transported the inside students outside of them. It boosted confidence, it was a couple of hours a week where everyone talked to each other with respect, and everyone was treated like they were absolutely smart enough to build a website. Ends up, that was true.
Some students who had never ever used a smart device before they were incarcerated with us and had access to a secure tablet were learning 21st century technology skills that most of us who’ve never been incarcerated don’t have. Was it a full coding program with a degree at the end? Nope. Did it introduce and excite them about pursuing that degree? Oh yeah. Do you only have people for 6 weeks? Turn them into students and introduce them to a career pathway, give them the information and introductions they need to pursue it further upon release, and you’ve helped someone avoid the trap of recidivism. That’s worth the small investment of time it takes to find and implement meaningful programming, even if it’s short-term.
Putting on your administrative hat, this type of programming is beneficial to your organization as well. Leverage press around one educational event like this, and offers of partnerships with other organizations will come pouring in. I’m not kidding. Every time I get press on a successful program, it begets other successful programs with passionate partners, and those beget others, and so on, and pretty soon, I’m not looking for meaningful programs, I’m choosing from offers. You can also leverage other partnerships that are beneficial to your organization through programming. In this instance, a magistrate judge saw the article about Brave Behind Bars at the same time I did and contacted them, and me, and he was an integral part of the implementation, from beginning to end. His passion for helping those folks who appear in his court is unparalleled, and now the students are personally interacting with the court in a whole new way, and the organization has an influential champion. Win/win.
Programs with partnerships like this one with MIT are generally at no-cost or very little cost. The ROI is undeniable. This program also cost the agency exactly one staff member per facility to monitor the class. MIT partners did everything else, including watching every student screen the entire class time, so if anyone would have clicked off the class to look at a prohibited site, the MIT instructor would know immediately. No one did, of course, because they were engrossed in the course work. Security issues? Zilch.
If your mission is to change lives, to provide rehabilitative opportunities for the incarcerated, and/or to reduce violence and recidivism, then you can and should invest in the time it takes to provide programming that’s truly meaningful to potential students. And lucky for you, I and my team can help. Contact us for a quick convo. We love hearing about the challenges corrections and education professionals face, because we love finding solutions even more.
Speaking of press (a few bullet points ago), if you’d like to read all about it, check out this article by the Washington Post about the Brave Behind Bars initiative referenced above.
Time for a refill of the ol’ coffee cup. Enjoy your week, and start thinking bigger (or shorter) about programming. Tally ho!
