I taught a semester in a max security prison. It was described to me as a controlled movement facility. It was an interesting experience and one that stuck with me. That prison was a bad place. Thanks for your anecdote about the former police officer.
Thank you for doing that, it's an important job. I learned spanish by taking an hour-long spanish class every weekday while I was in there.
If your class wasn't mandatory, then I'm sure you know that most people were just there probably to get extra time out of their cell or to break the monotony. And I assume most of them were complete assholes to you.
After I am financially independent, I want to try to get state/federal funding so that I can go back to prisons and teach programming AND partner with companies to have jobs/interviews lined up for release dates.
The worst part about being incarcerated isn't even always the time you serve, it's that our justice system means that you usually can never get a good job again, regardless of what your charge was (in my case it was one of the lowest class of felonies). It's like a ghost that haunts you forever.
I quickly figured out they were mostly there to break the monotony. I threw out the curriculum and did basic graph theory and some logic stuff. I only had one run in with someone. The prisoners treated me decently. I gave them all passing grades and just wanted them to get out of the experience whatever they wanted to get out of it.
How did you get into that? It's something I would love to do but I never knew how or if you could volunteer to just do a single course, if you'd have any sort of support, etc.
The college I worked at had a few classes at the prison. I was an adjunct and agreed to do it. None of the tenured faculty would do it. Didn’t really have any support. Did wear a body alarm. One way the body alarm would be activated was if it was horizontal for more than 3 seconds.
Not the poster, but I taught a computer science class in prison. I did it through a college which operates a degree granting program in the state prisons (in addition to normal college operations).
Most of the professors were paid, I did it as volunteer work.
|After I am financially independent, I want to try to get state/federal funding so that I can go back to prisons and teach programming AND partner with companies to have jobs/interviews lined up for release dates.
There are certainly NGOs who will help you with this mission. Do some research and let us know.
