SUBSTACK

“Inside Out” is the title of the workshop I’m teaching inside a state prison – a combination of personal narrative and journalism. The men write about life on the inside of the prison walls, but – if we can get it…

Because I haven’t been teaching in prison for awhile, I haven’t posted. I don’t want to fill your inbox with … well, filler. There’s no shortage of articles about being incarcerated during the holidays. Here’s a round up from my friends…

A few weeks ago, I took a required refresher course for prison volunteers. This mostly involved watching movies. There was a new one about maintaining boundaries, which featured the mugshots and stories of former prison employees. They’d all committed crimes that…

Every person I’ve ever met in prison is longing to get out. Yet I find myself wanting to go back in. Back in February, Corrections officers in New York State staged a three-week wildcat strike. Things still aren’t back to normal…

One writing exercise I like to assign is having the men write letters to their younger selves. It’s a vehicle for reflection and can often lead to more polished pieces. But responding to these letters as a writing teacher is hard…

I just found an old notebook from a class I taught in a Maximum Security Prison before the Covid pandemic. I wasn’t new to teaching inside – just to this particular facility and this group of men. It was only our…

Hector “Bori” Rodriguez was seven years old, and working for his uncle, the man who had brought him to the U.S. from his native Puerto Rico. Clients would slide money through a mail slot in an apartment building and Hector would…

I once taught a guy in a maximum security facility who wrote hilarious stories about a mouse in his cell. K imbued the mouse with a complicated personality. “Morris” (the mouse) was foul mouthed and vengeful. He would “take a crap”…

“My week sucked,” P said, as we went around the room to check in. “I turned 40 on Sunday.” “Boy, please,” R said. P is the youngest person in the classroom. But P continued. “I’ve been in prison since I was…

When I first started teaching in prisons, someone gave me a valuable piece of advice: do not patronize incarcerated people. I didn’t, I don’t, and boy, was that good advice.

This week’s lesson was on journalism ethics. We opened class with an on-theme warm up: a round of “Two Truths and a Lie.” It’s pretty basic – each person says three things about themselves, and the rest of the group has…

To teach inside a prison, you go through a lot of hoops. It takes almost a year to go through the security background check. You’re required to complete a training given by the Department of Corrections (DOCCS)