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One of my biggest successes has been in my ability to organize and develop good classroom management. I believe we all have it in us, to an extent, but some are better than others. I think it is a learned skill.  I also believe if you are organized, you can afford to be more flexible.

That seems like somewhat of a backward thought.  It would seem the more organized a person is, the more rigid he or she would be.  But the more you have everything in order, and the more you know where everything is, the more flexible you can be when something you have to deal with pops up out of the blue. I find myself less stressed and more able to be flexible, when there is a system in place.

by Dortell Williams

As a nation we^’ve come to value education, even harping on it with popular refrains such as, “education is the path to success, ” and “knowledge is power. ” Our confidence in education is so potent that we dare to vaunt it as one of the few real panaceas to America’s persistent plague of otherwise indomitable poverty.

Yet in the oddest of paradoxes we flatly deny education to those among us who need it most — prisoners. Indeed, it’s no secret that the vast majority of prisoners are undereducated, if not completely illiterate.

by Robert T. Elton

In understanding the role of education in one’s life (and the responsibility to seek it) some of us educators have not found that the practicing of any religious faith decreases test scores or detrimentally affects cognitive development. In fact, those religiously inclined show a tendency to high-school equivalency—and post-secondary studies. This is an interesting fact, as it speaks to the psychological and emotional needs of these prisoners.

by Robert T. Elton

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” U.S. Const. Amend. 1 (1787).

As much discord as religious ideas produce, the doctrine of free exercise actually does great service to most all belief structures—considering its birth and adoption in history (this 1st Amendment works today, even in prisons). In the correctional setting, religion dominates the lives of many prisoners, if only because practicing religious beliefs remains one of few rights prisoners have once inside; education is another right (a statutory one).

I’m going to go out on a limb and tell you about a day when I did tease a student inappropriately.  Mr. Cunningham* was barely twenty years old, and had only been in my class for about three weeks, so I didn’t know him very well.  Class had only been in session for a few minutes one morning, when he referred to me as “Ms. Loaner.”  I didn’t respond until about the third time he said this because I didn’t even realize he was talking to me. In big black letters, “LOANER” is written in several places on each book. It eventually dawned on me and the others that Mr. Cunningham thought my name was “Ms. Loaner”!  I have to say we all laughed, and I TRULY thought the man was playing a joke on me.