News

Always stay engaged. Tell your students what you are doing and why you are doing it. Tell them they need to practice at least 21 times if they want to remember a skill.  Remind them if they can hook onto something they already know, they are more likely to remember it. 

We even get involved in social services.  Martin Luther King Day is also the National Day of Community Service. I came up with an idea of having a food drive for a local food bank. They looked at me like I was nuts. But when I finished telling them about my idea, they decided they liked it. They realized there are people worse off than they are. Who would have guessed it, but these prisoners took on this project, and ran with it!

Soft skills and the social graces, as I call them, are very important to our school. We are always working and incorporating soft skills and social graces into the lessons. Every day I never fail to mention something about manners, and proper attire.  I may, on any given day, discuss speaking to groups, working as a team, or practicing listening skills. We discuss parenting skills and computer proficiencies such as keyboarding, word processing and spreadsheet creation. I encourage them to practice on the computer to become familiar with its possibilities.

Lifelong learning and the love of learning are illustrated

We have all heard of peer teaching in small groups, in pairs, and in whole classes. Peer teaching is a natural approach in my diverse setting. It is not always the higher level students teaching the lower level students. Sometimes the non-reader might be really excellent in math. He can then shine by helping a lower level math student, and the one who struggles in math can help the first student with word problems. What’s important to remember is the one doing the teaching is learning as much as the one being helped.

A skill where my students are weak is the ability to show and identify similarities and differences. The educational literature indicates you need to be able to compare and contrast. I explain this to the men and tell them how important the ability is, and we have had lessons to work on those skills.

For example, I have shown all three movies in the trilogy Sarah, Plain and Tall. We have read the books and watched the movies, and the students loved it! I used these movies to guide them on how to compare and contrast. I did a whole lesson on how 1909 was like 2009, and how the times were different. How were the clothes different? How were the marriages different or how were they the same? I put up big sheets of paper and gave them markers, and they went up and filled in the charts.

Each year, the PEN American Center presents awards for its Prison Writing Program. The program encourages literacy and creative expression. All participants are currently incarcerated somewhere in the United States. The PEN Center receives thousands of entries each year. The judges read the entries and make subjective evaluations in the following categories: poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, and drama. The 2012 winners, including honorable mentions, are listed below. These author-prisoners are to be congratulated and applauded.

2012 Annual Writing Contest Award Winners