When people hear that I teach a Sociology in a big security prison, they often ask if I’m scared. Then they think I’m going to prison, we share the information and converted tied readers. That is not the story I’m saying. Real conversion is not their own. It’s mine.
For more than ten years, I submitted prison programs and worked with people who were affected by justice. Three years ago, I made a long-hour drive, traveling for Hour-Wire, moving in metal thumbnails and I took a passing visit to the Connecticut State’s Cover of Connecticut State.
My desire to work with people in prison for those who defend me, allowing me to survive, prosper and give something. I grew up in Harlem during an elevation of cocaine epidemic. Social houses were my home. Effective urine, an attractive fragrance of fried food entered the streets of the hall, which is once for military armed sounds and to die for all new years. However, among these challenges, I have found love and protection.
Many older boys on my block is involved in road life. However, they saw something to me. They never tried to draw me from their jobs. Instead, they confirmed that I stayed. They used to say, “Nah, you are smart. You will do something about your life.” That kind of protection and love does not appear in math or news with the hood, but it saved me.
I didn’t do it out because I was different. I did it because people believed in me. Help me think about a different life. I manage their love when I get in that prison class. I teach because I owe the debt – not the way I twist, but in a way that allows me to leave my intention and see people about the same lens I made me to live my dreams.
In prison each week requires a psychiatric preparation. Before the study begins, I start with a lot of safety tests. The doors of buzz is open and closed behind me. I have never been comfortable with experience, even if I know I will go to the end of the class. I usually describe to teaching a jail as a wonderful feeling sad. It’s good because of energy and connection in class. It is sad because most of my students may not even see life across the gates.
These men, some of them have worked for decades, ready to participate. It demolishes the ideas of race, phase, power, sasking, patriarism and other related concepts. We analyze films, questions, and interrogation. But with me most of me are not written in a text unwritten, like when someone connects theological teaching on their story and says, “This sounds about me.”
One of the most unforgettable times come during the party’s debate. I divided the class into small groups and I asked them to evaluate the text using different social ideas. I just saw it. I saw a group of 15 men who were enthusiastically protesting that the social teaching, the social attitude or marathic idea was the best analysis. These were not limited to the surface level. They were sharp, sharp and strong. At that time, I told them, “This is what the earth does not see.”
People carry ideas about people who are bound with what they know. But seeing these men break up the ideas, challenge and show mental intelligence. We cannot record within a prison, so times like these are always shut up in the room. But they are real. And they bother.
One day, I asked the students to think of the last time they cried or heard someone saying, “I love you.” One student answers, “I don’t cry. Cry does not change anything.” After week, after completing the assignment to write his smaller letter, that same student began learning his life aloud and broke tears. No one is funny. No one turns away. Some men give him their attention, encouragement, and support. In that room, we build a space where his risk encounter care, even in the jail wall.
This experience forced me to deal with my purpose. I gave up my professor or manager. I thought what it meant to serve and get the oppressed people on the edge of the community. I began to question the limited boundaries between the campuses and the community. Universities, especially those who have too many resources, need to be more than the learning centers of those who are lucky enough to be allowed. We are called to do more.
For all my work, I worked to ensure that my influx is increasing than the camping of the campus. I have given my position to build bridges by connecting an intelligence and students to re-enter programs, base close closed scholars and build some opportunities for others to teach inside. Teaching to prison can make me more than much more. As a social suspect, I well know how to divide the lives of my students a little and my matters and how my way was.
The United States leads the land for arrest, holding more than 20 percent of the world’s prisoners despite 5 percent of the world. According to the prison policy system and the American Civil Liblies Union, many people who are arrested who are imprisoned from the surface, manufactured under that.
But even in the truth, some say that prisoners who need education – that College courses will borrow for resources. I’ve heard those arguments, and I reject. The prison education is not special treatment. It’s human dignity. To see that people can change and change when they are given display tools, growing and think about more than always life in survival mode.
If higher education is equally important to access, we cannot restrict our classes to complete scriptures and Résumés traditional Résumés. My teaching men don’t need to be saved. They require space for growth, question and donate. Also our centers need, for any university is a matter of justice, stability or personality cannot ignore people our country.
Every day, I am reminded that no one is realized in separation. I think what it means to pay off the debt that can save dollar. I think of respect for those who believed in me before I believed me. I stand on the shoulders who have never had the chances I have done. I have their money everywhere I add, especially those others when forgot.
One of the lessons I hold on is: We have no more to keep. Are designed for allocation. Teaching in prison is my way of respect that fact.