Honors 230A: Education Inside Prison
Take a class that will change your life!
Join us this Summer B Term (2018) for a series of classes at the Monroe Correctional Complex (transportation provided).
This class will offer an extraordinary opportunity to be involved in the creation of an education- and community-based program that will potentially have a very large impact. This project emerged from previous sessions of this Honors class, so you will be building on work accomplished by many other students both inside and outside prison.
Our class sessions at the prison are Wednesdays during B term: July 25, Aug. 1, 8, and 15. Students do NOT need to be in the Honors Program to enroll. All students must be over 18. Contact the instructor, Claudia Jensen (cjensen@uw.edu), for more information.
SLN 11752 Tues./Thurs. on the UW campus, 11:30-12:20
5 cr Wed. at the prison, 11:00 – 5:00
H230B In Your Name: Education inside Prison, preliminary outline of class projects, April 2018
Here is some preliminary information about the summer B term class to be held at the Twin Rivers Unit (TRU) at the Monroe prison.
First, please make sure you can attend all of the class sessions scheduled for TRU: the Wednesdays of B term, July 24, Aug. 1, 8, 15. These sessions are at the heart of the class, and obviously there are no make ups!
Second, all students must be at least 18 years old – no exceptions. You will need to submit, via Claudia, information to be sent to the Dept. of Corrections in order to be cleared to enter the prison; we’ll also have you sign forms saying that you acknowledge that when we are at the prison, we are under the jurisdiction of the Dept. of Corrections. Please note that, although TRU is ADA compliant, there may be other issues to consider that would represent normal accommodations at the UW but might prove more difficult in the prison environment (medications, for example). Please contact Claudia ASAP if you have questions or concerns.
Now, here’s the basic layout of the class: we’ll work together with a group of TRU student/inmates on the Wednesdays of B term. Each class session is intense, 3 hours, plus travel/clearance time. Transportation is provided, and we’ll leave as a group from the UW campus at 11:00 am on the Wednesdays; return at around 5:00 pm (traffic permitting). We have additional on-campus classes, on Tues/Thurs during B term (11:30-12:20). I view our travel time as valuable class time – you’ll see what I mean after our first session!
We will be working on three areas, all of which are loosely related to education. These topics were suggested and developed by the TRU students (I see them about once a month throughout the year). You don’t have to pick a topic right away, but during our first TRU session, we’ll have presentations of these projects and then divide into groups (mixed UW/TRU) and work very intensively on these topics. An overall theme is transforming the educational environment at the prison, or, as your fellow students have said, “how do we turn the convict code into a citizen code?”
One of our project deals specifically with educational opportunities inside the prison and creative ways we can provide alternatives. Although there are lots of good courses available online, you need to keep in mind that there is NO INTERNET IN PRISON – so one of the things we’ll think about is how we might be able to make such content available. Right now, I’m trying to figure out what kinds of equipment there is at TRU for showing videos, DVDs, etc., with the idea that maybe we can propose ways to bring some sustained course content to this environment. Are there other such programs pre-approved by other prisons? Can we figure out ways to leverage the opportunities to take paper-based correspondence classes among a larger group of students (for example, peer-to-peer learning)? What are the rules governing educational availability at the prison, and how do these rules impact students with long sentences to serve? Obviously this is still in progress but also lots of interesting brainstorming opportunities.
The next two topics (and actually the first one also) might involve Virtual Reality. I’ve been talking to the director of the UW’s Reality Lab, who is quite interested in bringing V/R into the prison in relevant ways. We also have some leads on this by collaborating with another program at one of the state’s prisons, in which inmates are learning coding skills related to V/R. So, how might these tools be used, for example, in preparing for reentry after serving ones’ sentence (V/R tours of college campuses? grocery stores? Dept. of Licensing offices?). What are the limitations of such technology within a prison environment and how can we address them productively? What is the value of using V/R over something else?
A final project involves the question of aging in prison – with the long sentences given out over the last few decades, the result is an aging prison population with special health and physical needs and stresses. How does this affect the prison environment as a whole? What happens when a 19-year-old shares a cell with a 75-year-old? Can V/R be used in a kind of therapeutic fashion to alleviate some of the physical stresses that are felt especially by older prisoners? This is a topic the men felt very strongly about, so I hope we can get creative here. I know that Prof. Herbert (LSJ) is doing research on this and I’ll be talking to him soon.
I look forward to sharing ideas with all of you and working together with the TRU students to create some new and powerful opportunities. This class has had a real impact in the past (I’ll tell you more about it in our first session), and you will have the opportunity to make a real difference in people’s lives, both inside and outside the prison.
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns,
Claudia