What Teaching in Prison is Teaching Me About Learning (Part I)

Greetings, readers of Inner Life. My name is Chuck Rybak, and I write over at The Declining Academic. I write about a number of things in that space, mostly because I don’t like to settle on one theme. There’s humor, there’s a feature called “Gun Free Entertainment,” and there are also a number of pieces on what I do for a living: education. Education is my professional life, and thus a significant part of my inner life. Like many, I find myself in a moment of crisis, as “all things AI” have completely eclipsed all other concerns in higher education. Weirdly, this is happening at a moment when two of my five classes are in area prisons, where the students have no technology at all. They write by hand. This time-capsule experience has led me to reflect quite a bit on what is actually required to make teaching and learning happen.

Below is the beginning of a braided essay on this juxtaposition—the prison environment versus the now “traditional” classroom environment. I also wanted to thank Josh Doležal for inviting me into this space, which I will now read frequently. Finally, The Declining Academic is a free publication, so if anything I write here catches your interest, you are welcome to stop by my unpredictable sandbox of a Substack anytime.

Two of the classes I am teaching are in-person classes for incarcerated students. One class is at a maximum-security facility and the other is at a medium. I’ve now run the full gamut—minimum, medium, maximum—and you learn to recognize in the students what type of facility you are in. This is not reflected in the students’ personalities—quite the contrary—instead, it manifests in the type of stress the environment has on them. You can see it. You can hear it. You can read it.

I don’t want to write long paragraphs about this. I don’t want to preach. So here’s an attempt at braided narrative, as my experience teaching these students is woven into and juxtaposed with that of “traditional” students, while also stitching itself into my own history as a teacher and student. This experience has demolished a number of my assumptions and also helped me to remember what is truly required for teaching and learning to happen.

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Ed Tech

My incarcerated scholars are model students, and they must earn their way into the classroom. They write essays beforehand about why they want to take a college class. Their behavioral record can have no recent transgressions of any kind. When you arrive for your first class, your students have been preparing for your arrival for a long time. Eagerly.

AI

Like many universities, my employer is pushing hard on Artificial Intelligence. Get it into your classes and assignments. Get it into your learning outcomes. Syllabus statements. Meetings. No other technology exists. In some ways this is understandable. I find myself wondering why we didn’t feel this way about another recent and global-changing form of technology: the smartphone, the supercomputer that directors now make feature films on and that produces the majority of the cultural content we consume. No classes dedicated to the smartphone. No emails from leadership about smartphones and the significant change to come.

Word

Before entering a prison, I have to leave my phone in my car. I text my children that I will be out of reach for two hours. Heavy iron gates that look straight off a movie set retract, one by one, until I reach the classroom. Incarcerated students do not have access to the internet. This semester, my students do not have the prison-fitted laptops called “clearbooks.” They will write every assignment this semester by hand. They go slow. They don’t want to be embarrassed by bad handwriting. They don’t want to be judged by a misspelling. They spend significant time thinking through their writing. I tell them that, when done right, thinking and writing are synonymous. A student handwrites me a poem, a space between each line, about a horse running across an open landscape.

Zoom

For the first time, I am teaching a traditional course that has students that are both in-person and attending virtually. When I begin most classes, on screen sits a series of dark squares. Icons of cameras and microphones have red slashes through them.

Office

There is immense pressure teaching incarcerated students. This has nothing to do with the environment or fear. The pressure is in their expectations. You can feel their high expectations of you in each class meeting. They’re tangible. Any wasted moment is noted. During class I often repeat in my head, You are 100% here and give them your all, no matter what. You are 100% here. I realize that I am not used to teaching in an environment free of technological distractions. In fact, I’ve never taught in spaces where technology could distract by simply not working. In the prison classroom, there are no phones. No screens. The most advanced technologies in the room are the whiteboard and air conditioner.

Track Changes

I imagine this as a form of detox. Here are things I am used to saying that fall out of my vocabulary while teaching inside the prisons. Let me share my screen—Hold on, let me log on—You’re on mute—Okay, I’ve just set up the breakout rooms—Can you all see that? Someone say “yes” because I cannot see you right now—download the document from the discussion area—Can you repeat that? I lost you a bit there. All of these phrases, three to five seconds at a time, adding up to a few minutes per class. Over an hour of class time total for the semester.

Tools: “Spelling and Grammar”

A small number of the incarcerated students have manual typewriters in their cells. They say they cost about $80.00. A student types his first essay, front and back on one sheet of paper, single spaced. The essay is one long paragraph with no punctuation. I surprise myself by not being critical. No annoyance. No, Oh boy. I am not put out by “the work ahead.” When doing my PhD, poetry was my major area of study. I’ve read Olson, Creeley, Ashbury, and Levertov. I taught classes on the prose of William Faulkner, which is poetry. The student’s essay is a poem that I read and love. It makes perfect sense as a poem, a poem about foster care.

Powerpoint

I assign all of my students one poem to memorize. One sonnet. John Keats’ “When I have fears that I may cease to be.” I tell them that this poem calms me. I recite it at night in my head, often if I’m anxious or can’t sleep. I know every metrical variation, why that variation exists, how that variation works. It’s like counting beads. Worrying a stone. Successful meditation. The first student to fully recite Keats to me and their classmates is incarcerated. It’s the second class of the semester.

Wikipedia

I am teaching in two different periods of history. I live in a science fiction novel. On Monday and Wednesday, it is 1976-1989. On Tuesday and Thursday, as well as Friday through Sunday, it is 2024+. There are no in-between years. I am sitting at a desk at School #22 learning to write the alphabet on paper. I am left-handed. I use the scissors with the green handle. This is seen as a problem. Simultaneously, I sit before dual monitors, using open-source software to create network graphs of character interactions in a Don DeLillo novel. Nodes and vertices. When the power goes out during the storm I cannot work.

Qualtrics

During the summer session our institution awarded, for the first time, Associate’s degrees to incarcerated students. All faculty who taught in the program wore regalia to the graduation. It was if we had descended from the Acropolis. The students take more pride in what we represent than we do. Families and students openly weep during the ceremony. One of my students graduates and then releases the next day. I don’t know if these students will ever receive the surveys we send, about first jobs. About satisfaction. In his final course, we read novels about climate change. Cli-Fi. His favorite is a short novel by Andrew Krivak called The Bear. He says, I liked it because that’s what I want right now. All nature. Independence. No distractions.

YouTube

I walk out into the yard for the first time. I have permission to move around the medium facility without escort. The prison sits on almost 200 acres. There is a horticulture program. Men walk by me and say “hello.” To others I am invisible, as they are used to guests and contractors like me. In the distance, men who appear tiny on the horizon are throwing a ball. Others are doing pushups.

Google

An incarcerated student asks me if Plato wrote in English. This gives me an excuse to talk about ancient Greek, the language of Homer, the language of the New Testament, the definition of canon with one “n.” Why translation is an art. We talk “The Allegory of the Cave” for 90 minutes, the room filled with a desperation to understand. They arrived with handwritten questions, passages underlined in pencil. We talk about denotation and connotation. With what do we associate light? What is the “lightbulb” that goes on over one’s head? What does it mean “to be in the dark”? I ask them about dragging people into the light. How does that make them feel? Can we force people to learn? Should we? The students agree that changing your beliefs is hard, often painful. They say Plato is right about this. The light can hurt your eyes. Letting go of something that once felt so natural and right, they offer, is one of the most challenging things a person can do. I rush the end of class. The discussion has left me no time to describe what’s due by next time. I will have no contact with them until then—no emails, no calls, no posts on a learning management system. This lack of contact is never a problem.

Command-Tab

Extensions. Missed classes. Missing assignments. A student disappears for a few weeks then returns. There is no such thing as perfect attendance. Students registered to be in-person start appearing online. The technology is new to me. I don’t know how to judge any of this. Should I? My mind spends time on this. I ask myself, if half of the class registered to attend virtually, why would an in-person student appearing virtually be a problem? If I am a good teacher, then there is no “lesser,” right? Why does it feel like someone is breaking a promise? All of this technology is required. Enrollment numbers. Tuition dollars. I wear the devices like Iron Man wears his suit before he knew how to fly.

Copilot

My institution has a partnership with Microsoft. We are being encouraged to use Copilot. I’ve been using AI for a few years now, but in our world every day is day zero. Some people are free to talk about the future. Others must listen to descriptions of the future. I’m terrified of being in the “out group.” I started the first digital humanities program on our campus. AI is different. AI causes tension. I’ve asked a few questions about AI, as I should as an educator. These few questions have not been received well. Tempers flare. I’m in the out group. I’m invisible. I’m old. I might as well be handwriting on paper. There are new stars now.

Social Media

My traditional students, unprompted, ask me at the start of class to not talk about AI. I do not know what class or event they are coming from. I ask them why? They say, we’re sick of it and that’s all that our teachers are talking about right now. We’re sick of policies. I know they are exaggerating, but I get the point. We read and talk about Sylvia Plath’s poem “Cut.” We talk about defamiliarization. A trepanned veteran? They know iambic rhythm now. They know anapestic movements and trochaic movements. We read “Cut,” a free verse poem that is classic Plath. Anapest. Two iambs and an anapest. Classic Plath! Then the spondees. Dead white. Red plush. Now scan, Whose side are they on? Whose side are they on? Say it aloud. Whose side are they on? Classic Plath.

Password Change

I have no keys in the prisons. I stand and wait for gates to open. Only one gate can open at a time in the prisons. The students arrive with paper passes that allow them to move freely to class. They clutch the perfect-bound course reader in their arms. James Baldwin. Who is this James Baldwin? Can we talk about his “The Creative Process” first? I have way more than the two underlined passages you asked for. I basically underlined the whole thing.

Digital

Perfect attendance, every class. Not a single missing assignment. Not one. All rough drafts, turned in. All final drafts, turned in. All reading, completed, often more than once. They thank me for coming. I thank them for taking my class. Someone says, “We’ll see you next week.”

To be continued…