Inmates Tutoring Inmates in a Total institution THE WRITING CENTER GOES TO JAIL Texas HOPE Literacy trains inmates to . . . Inmates Tutoring Inmates in a Total institution

http://www.marquette.edu/writingcenter/PeerTutorAlumniPage.htm

The Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project aims to document and assess the value of peer tutoring for the tutors themselves after their graduation. . . . Collectively, what did these former tutors take with them into their occupations and lives as veterans of a peer tutoring program? Based on my reading of the surveys to date, the most significant benefit that students take with them from their writing center experience is earned confidence in themselves. The combination of training and collaborative experience is a transformative experience for students. Nearly every survey reflects on how training and experience in collaborative learning and peer tutoring helps individuals develop a deeper sense of their own competence, first as students and then, once they graduate, as individuals who can do the world's work, particularly the heavy lifting that has to do with language and writing. This increased sense of self-confidence that students acquire in the writing center and then take with them into their lives is derived from several inter-related sources and experiences and is grounded in large measure by their proven ability to communicate effectively with others in complex and demanding circumstances. Harvey Kail, “Situated in the Center” (CCCC 2006)

Nearly 60% of adult prisoners are completely or functionally illiterate, compared with only 25% of the non-incarcerated public. (Gwen Rubinstein, 2001) Newly released prisoners rarely have jobs lined up, and many are discharged to homeless shelters. Most have no Medicaid or health insurance, a grave disadvantage for those with serious mental illness or HIV infection. Without help from family members or community organizations, ex-inmates have a strong incentive to commit crimes to survive, and an increased chance of ending up in city hospitals and psychiatric wards. Linda Ostreicher, Gotham Gazette: NYC News and Policy (January, 2003) We simply cannot reduce recidivism without funding programs that open up opportunities for ex-convicts to create alternatives to criminal lifestyle. It simply cannot be done. Joan Petersilia, When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry (NY: Oxford UP, 2003)

Texas H.O.P.E. Literacy, Inc. Helping Others Pursue Education . . . “Help Others Pursue Education” by working one-on-one with their incarcerated peers. This important program is pragmatic and flexible in its structure, existing as it does via three rather different models in 4 Texas prisons—all with a core reliance on individualized instruction. It is no secret that the percentage of functionally illiterate men and women is higher in our prisons than in any other institution in America. Much higher. About 10 years ago, Lucy Smith—a Certified Language Therapist and specialist in learning disabilities—determined much of this functional illiteracy may the direct result of undiagnosed dyslexia.

Texas HOPE Literacy, Inc. HOPE at Gatesville Trusty Camp, Gatesville, TX (established 1997) HOPE at Hutchins State Jail, Hutchins, TX (established 1997) HOPE at Dawson State Jail, Dallas, TX (established 2004) HOPE at InnerChange, Richmond, TX (established 2006) City Model (Dawson) Chapel Model (Hutchins and InnerChange) After Hours Model (Gatesville)

The Chapel Model (Hutchins State Jail, Dallas, TX) Thus, in 1997, she began Texas HOPE Literacy at Hutchins State Jail in Dallas, Texas, a program that trains inmate to work one-on-one with their incarcerated peers using a curricula designed especially for dyslexic individuals developing new literacies. Every morning at about 7:30, the inmate tutors and students involved with HOPE leave their overcrowded and un-air-conditioned dorms, walk, single-file, down the “ally” through several prison gates and often-quite hostile guards to the chapel, the only air-conditioned building on the prison grounds designated for inmate use. . Inmate peer educators teach incarcerated peers in a centralized location.

The Community Model (Dawson State Jail, Dallas, Texas) The Community Model is the most recent incarnation of Texas HOPE Literacy. In 2004, the warden at Dawson State Jail asked Lucy if she could bring Texas HOPE Literacy there. After one visit, Lucy learned that none of the current models would work there. At Hutchins, the men sleep in one building, eat in another, and work in yet another. The HOPE “workplace,” in that sense, functions like many of the workplaces in the free word. Tutors arrive in the morning, after sleeping at “home” and eating breakfast. They leave the building for lunch, and return for the afternoon, and go home at the end of the day. At Dawson, on the other hand, inmates rarely move from room to room and never leave the building. This facility is a high-rise building in downtown Dallas, organized into multiple “dorms” on 10 floors, with about 54 inmates per dorm. Inmate peer educators teach incarcerated peers in a structured environment called a “city” (the same space in which they live, work, sleep, and eat). They elect their own mayor, city manager, city council resolution and review boards. They self-govern under the auspices of prison governance. 

Prison as a “Total Institution” A “total institution” is “a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time together, lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.” [. . . ] Their encompassing or total character is symbolised by the barrier to social intercourse with the outside and to departure that is often built right into the physical plant, such as locked doors, high walls, barbed wire, cliffs, water, forests, or moors. First, there are institutions established to care for persons felt to be both incapable and harmless; these are the homes for the blind, the aged, the orphaned, and the indigent. Second, there are places established to care for persons felt to be incapable of looking after themselves and a threat to the community, albeit an unintended one: TB sanitaria, mental hospitals, and leprosaria. A third type of total institution is organised to protect the community against what are felt to be intentional dangers to it, with the welfare of the persons thus sequestered not the immediate issue: jails, penitentiaries, P.O.W. camps, and concentration camps. Fourth, there are institutions purportedly established the better to pursue some worklike tasks and justifying themselves only on these instrumental grounds: army barracks, ships, boarding schools, work camps, colonial compounds, and large mansions from the point of view of those who live in the servants' quarters. Finally, there are those establishments designed as retreats from the world even while often serving also as training stations for the religious; examples are abbeys, monasteries, convents, and other cloisters. (Goffman, 1961) . . . “Help Others Pursue Education” by working one-on-one with their incarcerated peers. This important program is pragmatic and flexible in its structure, existing as it does via three rather different models in 4 Texas prisons—all with a core reliance on individualized instruction. It is no secret that the percentage of functionally illiterate men and women is higher in our prisons than in any other institution in America. Much higher. About 10 years ago, Lucy Smith—a Certified Language Therapist and specialist in learning disabilities—determined much of this functional illiteracy may the direct result of undiagnosed dyslexia.

@ Texas A&M-Commerce @ Hutchins State Jail They then transform this large, empty room into a learning space teaming with activity and all that great, productive noise and energy that those of us involved in writing center work know and love. Describe the difference between the dorms and HOPE Purpose HOPE Describe the space @ Hutchins State Jail

Benefits of Tutoring (as reported by inmate tutors) self-confidence personal satisfaction patience understanding open-mindedness compassion an ability to “actually listen for a change” (Sarah) I have developed “[t]he ability to teach and learn at the same time. . . . I value learning more than before” (Debbie) I have learned “how to help others in need” (Cyndi) “Being able to become a tutor to some one . . . helps me have a sense of accomplishment, the want and desire to help more, the drive or rush that it gives when the student actually learns and comprehends what is being taught” (Dusti) “It’s wonderful. I feel needed and worth something” (Jessica) “. . . in this facility [as tutors] we get an opportunity not just to help another person but to start the actual brain functioning that we were not using prior to getting incarcerated. Being able to organize our thoughts, teach them and watch another person learn from them are so rewarding. These rewards not only help our own self esteem but the self-esteem of others. And positively helping another human being is not something that has interested me in quite some time.” (Tracy)

Students and tutors live, work, eat, and sleep in the same room, leaving only for “pill call,” trips to the commissary, classes, and the rare visit with friends and family from the free world. Three toilets, three showers, and fifty-four bunks line the perimeter of each dorm. Tutoring takes place at a series of tables in the middle of the room—the same tables upon which they eat their meals, write letters to their families, and worry about the future. Before Texas HOPE Literacy could work at Dawson State Jail, Lucy decided that they would need a structure beyond that required at any workplace environment. This is, in fact, a “city”—in some of the same ways Fort Worth is a city—or Dallas or New York or even Commerce, for that matter. Residents eat here (though residents of a free-world city like Fort Worth have choices), sleep here (though most of us in the free-world don’t have to sleep in the same rooms in which we work, certainly not with our co-workers), and work here. In that they live as a city, they are even developing their own city charter.