I Want to Go Back to Jail

Abstract

At the Onondaga County Justice Center, Ms. Olcott entered the lives of the students who had disappeared from the radar screen of American education. I WANT to go back to jail. I'm serious. I was a more honest, more effective teacher there. I trusted my students, and they trusted me. We worked together toward the next scheduled GED (General Education Development) test and filled ourselves with as much literature as I could put in their willing hands. Every day I went deep into a maximum- security facility to the women's pod, where my students lived and ate and studied. Every day I encountered students who were eager to learn and glad for the simple materials I brought. I rediscovered pure, joyous teaching. In that stark environment, I rediscovered the educational power of kindness and respect. Like so many of us now, I was a card-carrying member of the sandwich generation, caregiver for my father while I still had a teenager at home. When my father died, I was exhausted, sad, and thoroughly disillusioned with long-term care, Medicare, and every other kind of care. I was eager to return to teaching, my late father's profession as well as mine. I responded to an ad in the paper looking for a teacher for an incarcerated education program, with no real idea of what that meant. My father's funeral was on a stormy Friday in January. The next week, I was thrilled to be hired as a GED teacher at the Onondaga County Justice Center. My new life had begun. From the very beginning, I was struck by the contrast between the bleak correctional environment and the rich educational experiences offered there. The offerings were not limited to GED courses but included training in office technology, anger management, food service, and many other subjects. The Syracuse City School District, in conjunction with the Onondaga County Sheriff's Office, has operated the Incarcerated Education Program for several years. It is a showcase in that it is well respected in corrections services circles. But it is practically unknown to the general public, even in the county where it exists. The Justice Center houses about 600 prisoners at any one time, and perhaps 60 or 70 of them are women. It is a nonsentenced facility, so students might be in the program for a few days or a few months before being bailed out, sentenced upstate, or transferred to other facilities. The GED test is given in-house about every two months. Pass rates, about 50%, equal and sometimes exceed those on the outside. In New York State, inmates aged 16 through 21 who lack a GED or high school diploma are required to attend classes. Many students over 21 attend voluntarily. Most of the girls and women I met were African American and had left school around 10th grade, usually due to pregnancy or childbirth. Most were incarcerated for economic crimes -- prostitution, shoplifting, passing bad checks, selling drugs, and occasionally burglary and assault. Most scored between the fourth- and sixth-grade levels on the TABE (Test of Adult Basic Education), the test we used as a baseline. Most were involved with men who never came to see them. Most had children, whom they missed very much, being cared for by relatives. The first student I met was Sally. She was about 40 years old, and her children were being raised by her father and stepmother. Several acts of violence had brought her here and to prison in the past. Sally instantly became my self-appointed assistant and made it her priority to have the heavy tables dragged together and the shaky whiteboard erected and ready for us every morning. She worked hard and encouraged the other students with persuasive personal lectures on the importance of education. When she left to serve time in a state prison, I missed her. Sally's close friend Sheryl took over the role of encourager, but she left the moving of the heavy tables to the kids. I usually had eight or 10 students at a time, of different ages and working at different levels. …