Teaching and Learning With Youth Behind Bars

• In Event: School, Not Jail: How Educators Can Disrupt School Push-Out and Mass Incarceration

Abstract

Education cannot stop with incarceration. Believing this, the presenters are two experienced literacy teachers who have dedicated their careers to teaching English and literacy in a juvenile detention center that is a part of the court system for a large urban center on the West Coast. Working inside the jail, they collaborate to create educational opportunities that are both culturally relevant and sustaining (Paris, 2012), while at the same time striving to help their students see beyond their current situations as detained youth. The presenters understand that education can be part of their students’ liberation, and they teach so that they can disrupt the system that now detains their students. They have been team-teaching in the detention center for nearly a decade, and for many years they have been collaborating with a teacher educator (also a presenter in this session) to study their practice as well as help novice teachers gain a deeper understanding of strategies for supporting detained youth. As experienced teachers, they believe that working with detained youth should be a critical component of teacher education.

This work considers literacy curricula and strategies for helping youth understand the system that detains them and the social contexts that they must navigate to avoid returning to jail. While the prison industrial complex is a relevant subject in this setting, this teaching focuses on humanizing experiences and finding hope in the personal narratives and histories that the students bring to class (Duncan-Andrade, 2009).

Authors

• Megan Mercurio, Woodside Learning Center

• Constance Walker, Woodside Learning Center