|
Teaching Creatively During COVID
|
|
|
Dear <<First Name>>,
The Spring 2022 semester started off with a bang for HWPEP students at Muskegon Correctional Facility. Students were excited to begin their first semester as full-time degree-seeking students after successfully completing the Fall 2021 Faith Seeking Understanding course. They had a chance to meet their Spring professors during an orientation session in December. Christmas came and went, and classes began as scheduled on January 10. COVID was running rampant in other prisons, but Muskegon Correctional Facility had so far been spared. And then, after 10 days of terrific engagement with mathematics, expository writing, and the New Testament, COVID found its way into MCF, infecting prisoners and staff alike. The prison went into "outbreak status" and was closed to visitors and volunteers. HWPEP had anticipated this possibility, and pivoted to remote instruction that involves professor-recorded lectures, handouts, and assignments. A box of DVDs and papers is dropped off at MCF every Thursday, and homework is picked up, distributed to professors, and brought back to students in the next week's "Thursday box."
Do we eagerly await the day when COVID cases taper off and face-to-face instruction can resume? Oh yes. And so do our students. Until then, we're grateful for dedicated, creative professors and resilient, diligent students. Is HWPEP alone in having to be creative in adapting to the realities of the COVID pandemic? No. Click here to learn more about how other Christian colleges who teach in prisons are flexing to continue their missions in the prisons they serve.
|
|
|
Digital and paper student learning files assembled for delivery to Muskegon Correctional Facility
|
|
|
Restorative Justice Initiatives
|
|
|
|
The Hope-Western Prison Education Program is an extension of the mission of two West Michigan institutions - Hope College and Western Theological Seminary. It serves a small fraction of the population of incarcerated men in a single prison. But HWPEP is part of a large and interconnected ecosystem of burgeoning efforts that seek a kind of restorative justice that reflects the Beloved Community yearned for by so many. One such initiative is the Restorative Justice Mediation Act being promulgated and promoted by the Michigan Restorative Justice Council. The MRJC is comprised of religious, political, judicial, corrections, and education leaders who strive to create an alternative to the present retributive justice system. It advocates for policies that allow stakeholders in the criminal justice system to universally implement victim/offender mediation at the various stages of the criminal justice process. The MRJC will help promote alternative sentencing and offer a path to mercy, forgiveness, healing and restoration pre-adjudication and beyond. Click on the video link below to learn more.
|
|
|
|
Courtesy of Michigan Restorative Justice Council
|
|
Building a Trauma-Responsive Educational Practice: Lessons from a Corrections Classroom
(Em Daniels, 2022, 156 pages, $39.95, Routledge)
This timely manual presents a new perspective on teaching and learning focused on countering the impacts of trauma on adults’ ability to learn. Within its detailed and useful approaches, Daniels provides a road map for building a trauma-responsive teaching practice grounded in the principles of Trauma-Informed Care, and emphasizing the need for educators to develop a rigorous practice of self-care.
Prison classrooms, in particular, demonstrate the intersectional and overlapping nature of systemic, historical, and individual traumatic experience. People who rediscover themselves as learners while in corrections classrooms have a unique and powerful perspective to bring to the work of ending mass incarceration, and the role of education and learning in that ending.
The concepts and framework presented in the text aim to expand how we define "working with trauma." Through this redefinition, we better align teaching and learning as counters to the impacts of trauma. As this alignment transforms educational philosophy and practice, we have an opportunity to repurpose the nature of education itself, and shift toward learning how to learn.
Although this book contains content specific to corrections educators, or those aspiring to teach in prisons, its concepts and activities are applicable to any environment or situation in which adults need to learn. Adult educators, front-line personnel in any public service role, librarians, legal professionals, judges, lawyers—all can benefit from the expertise shared in this book.
What Reviewers Say About This Book:
"Effective prison teaching requires sensitivity to the carceral context. Em Daniels provides a great service to instructors by shedding light on the physical, social, and emotional contours of these spaces. The book will help thoughtful teachers navigate prisons and other harshly controlled environments more effectively, for the benefit of their students and of the education programs they work with." (Rebecca Ginsburg. Director, Education Justice Project, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.)
"This is a seminal work in the field of education [that] addresses two factors that are not understood and overlooked in the assessment and evaluation: trauma and epistemology. This book examines the most current constructs of intergenerational trauma from epigenetics and offers solutions...European culture takes pride in the formulation of its own epistemology starting at the cradle of Western Civilization…[but] Plato realized that there was more than one way to teach and learn. We should follow his guidance." (Edwin J. Nichols, PhD. Clinical/Industrial Psychologist. Author of The Philosophical Aspects of Cultural Difference.)
(Source: Routledge)
|
|
We are grateful for the growing interest in HWPEP's mission and work among churches, neighbors, community groups, and the Hope and WTS campus membership. Outreach to others who pray for, support financially, and engage with HWPEP is empowering for our students, who continually express their appreciation for those on the outside who support their education on the inside.
Recent conversations about HWPEP have included the Holland Classis of the Reformed Church in America, students in Professor Rebecca Rozema's Social Work class, and interested students who attended the Hope College Center for Diversity and Inclusion's Casual Conversation series.
|
|
|
If you are interested in helping spread the good news of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program to your church, Bible study group, business lunch-and-learn program, book club, gourmet group, homeowners association, or group of friends - please contact us!
|
|
|
We've Got Spirit, How 'Bout You?
|
|
|
|
On Wednesday, January 12 the Hope College men’s basketball team defeated arch-rival Calvin University, 78-65. The next morning we walked into B-104 at Muskegon Correctional Facility for the first day of English 113: Expository Writing. How were we greeted by 12 incarcerated men?
|
|
|
"Hey!!! We won last night!!!"
|
|
|
|
For more remarkable stories from classroom B-104 at Muskegon Correctional Facility, check out the HWPEP blog here.
|
|
|
|
Learn about how students in a New Mexico prison are learning about themselves by learning about Hemingway
|
|
|
Incarcerated students are capable of deep, thoughtful, and insightful learning in ways that are often surprising to those who have never met them. Take a few minutes to see a powerful story about how prisoners in a New Mexico prison are changing as a result of reading Hemingway. Click on the video link above.
|
|
|
Please consider a gift to support our work.
The Hope-Western Prison Education Program's fundraising goal for 2022 is $200,000. Gifts made this year will be matched up to $100,000. All gifts help offset costs for professor and teaching assistant stipends, travel to and from Muskegon Correctional Facility, textbook and computer purchases, school supplies, and student and staff orientation. Can you help?
|
|
Help us spread the good news of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program by forwarding this to a friend. Thank you.
Our mailing address is:
prisonprogram@hope.edu
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.
|
|
|
|
|
