May 15, 2015 - 01:28
My placement was at the GingerBread Women’s Prison located in the greater Chocodelphia area. Every Friday from 11:45am until 3:30pm or 4:00pm myself, seven other students, and two professors made our way to the GingerBread Prison, about a 45 minute drive from campus, to participate in a book club with the women there. I remember before our first visit going and speaking with my professor about how I could very well be the only male in the room, either genetically or emotionally. We talked about how this might be an issue, and what we should/could do to make my presence in the classroom comfortable for everyone. In the end we realized that there was nothing we could really do but feel out the situation. I decided for myself that I wouldn’t be very vocal for the first couple of sessions. The last thing I wanted to do was say something insensitive and then be labeled as an arrogant insensitive male who comes into a women’s prison thinking he is better than everybody else.
The first day we went I remember feeling really nervous, purely because it was my first time in a prison and I didn’t know what to expect. We walk in the front door and there is a desk with a correctional officer (CO) and a metal detector. Behind her is the three door locking entrance system, the main entrance and exit for GingerBread Prison staff and non individual inmate visitors (like us). Before going through those three doors we trade our licenses or passports for ID badges, go through the metal detector, get our hands stamped, and get patted down by the CO. Then we go through the first of three large heavy sliding doors. We have to wait for the first one to close for the second one to open. Two more doors later and we’re on the inside of the prison. There, another CO is waiting for us and we show zim our stamps, ze checks our bags that we bring in, and ze pats each us down again. If we can make it past this far (we always did) then we are allowed into the elevators and make our way up to the classroom.
The classroom is located in the GingerBread Prison’s Education Center. The prison has programs for women completing their GED and programs for women who want to earn credits from a handful of local and community colleges. The classroom that we use is a bright white classroom with no windows and 10 tables which we push to the walls. We set up the chairs in a circle in the middle of the room. Usually about 5-10 minutes after we arrive at the prison and check in with the first CO, a call goes out to the whole prison saying that the Bryn Mawr Book club will be happening. From there it takes about another 5-10 minutes for the women to make their way from wherever they are to the classroom. Some days 3-4 women show up, some days 10-12 women show up.
A recurring discussion topic with the women has been how limited control they have over their own situation. For them, everything is dictated by the prison system, specifically by the COs. Many of the women have voiced complaints about specific COs, one women remarking that the “minute [she] got out of this place [she would] sue the hell out of them.” They don’t like how some of the COs think that just because these women are inmates at the prison means that the COs have absolute control over them. Many have voiced complaints of not being allowed to come to the book club because “a CO ‘said so.’” For these women, their world is controlled by the system, (the COs) and that can be a tough truth to live in.
As I sit and look back at what I just wrote I realize that I wish I could go back to the beginning of the semester and switch my learning objectives. Before going into the prison, I saw my time there as a chance for me to learn and understand a different way of living, a different culture. It was a very one sided approach to the praxis placement, and I didn’t at all think about what I could bring to the conversations and readings that would strengthen said conversations and the overall group. I don’t mean to sound like the heroic male coming in to save these women. What I am saying is that I was focussing on what I could take away from the conversation, which is important, but I didn’t focus on what I could contribute.
As I began to think about this, and what I could have been bringing to the conversations, I realized that this space that we, students, professors, and women, created could be a place of empowerment for these women, and frankly for myself as well. We could discuss anything we wanted in this space; there were no COs to monitor our language. I feel that we could have empowered the women more, give them a space where they feel like they can take back control over their own lives. Ceballo’s neighborhood intervention programs were designed as a way for students living in toxic conditions to regain a sense of control over their lives and their present situation. Drawing from this, I feel like our space in the prison could have been a space for the women to regain a sense of control over their lives.
I think that one way we could have done this was to have more interactive experiences for the women in which they control what’s going on. Ceballo used skits and artistic expression as a way for the children in her neighborhood intervention programs to express their emotions and feelings towards the violence in their lives. I think that had we been able to do skits and more artistic pieces like drawings, or maybe a group mural or group collage, I believe the women would have been more engaged in the activities and in turn feel like they had more control over what they were doing.
A major roadblock that we always faced in the prison was how infrequent everybody’s attendance could be, which led to people not being able to do the readings. Unfortunately this is something that is way out of our control; we have no say in who is allowed to come and when the call goes out for them to come. With this, I think having weekly reading assignments from a single book can be tough because we don’t have that many regulars who can be there to comment on the book. Many times it felt like it was the Candytown College students who were the ones asking questions, and sometimes the only ones to enthusiastically offer ideas without encouragement.
To help fix this I propose that we read less books, and read more smaller pieces of literature. Instead of reading a book every 2 weeks, we could read one every 4 weeks. The reading load would be less, and that way we could actually delve into a specific part of the book each time, and if somebody didn’t read, they could have more weeks to catch up. In addition to books, we can have packets that we give each woman at the beginning, or whenever their first day is, that have short pieces of literature (3 pages each maximum). Each week we could spend the first part discussing one piece from the packet that the women found interesting. Since the passages are short, anybody who didn’t read it, or just got their packet that day, can quickly read or skim over whatever is being discussed and then join the conversation, instead of feeling left out because they didn’t read. This way the women have something to talk about that many, if not all of them, will have read before hand, and hopefully we can have an interesting and meaningful discussion about it.
In these discussions we can incorporate times to have meaningful artistic expression. These can range from sketches to skits to collage and maybe even a mural. A sketch activity that we could do would be to find a meaningful scene in the book and have them draw what they think the character is feeling, or what their emotion looks like. This requires the women to really think about and forces them to tap into their emotions to empathize with the character they are describing. Women can choose to share theirs or not, and hopefully this would lead to a meaningful discussion. The hands-on, individuality of the activity also gives women control over what they draw, and what they choose not to draw. Their drawings can then lead to deeper and meaningful conversations about the text.
When we have a more serious topic we can engage in dialogue with each other in more than just sitting around in a circle. Why not incorporate the different pedagogical activities that we use in class? Personally I think fishbowl conversations would work really well, and it would give the more outspoken members a chance to speak, and it would give the quieter members an activity where it is perfectly fine to not speak and only listen. Before the activity we could give everyone slips of paper and they could write questions or discussion topics that we could speak about pertaining to the book or short pieces we were talking about that day. Then we could pick two or three random topics and have five minute fishbowl conversations on each topic. I think that by choosing topics that the women think of this gives them an active role in the direction of the conversation.
If there are a bunch of questions, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of buzz about one thing, we could do the posters around the room. Each question or discussion point can be put up on posters around the room and the women can go to each one and respond to the prompts. Then at the end we can come back together and talk about what was said and what we all felt about it. This activity is active, requiring the women to move where they want to go. The key is that they get to choose where they want to go. Nobody is telling them where to go, or what to write. They are in control of what poster they go to and how they respond to each prompt.
Another activity for a bunch of questions or discussion topics is a barometer. This actually includes many more women than the fishbowl activity, in fact it includes anybody who chooses to participate, however it doesn’t lead to as intimate conversation. We can ask women to write down questions and women can come up and randomly choose a question and ask it to the group. After we situate ourselves along the barometer, we can discuss and then move on to the next question. Since the women come up with, and ask the questions, this activity allows for many of the women to feel included and feel like they have a role in the direction of the conversation.
Overall, it felt like we, the students and professors, were making a lot of decisions for the group. I’m actually only realizing this now, but I feel like it might have created a weird power dynamic between the women and Candytown students. To me it felt like we were going in to the prison for the women, that we were setting up the book club for the women, that everything about the book club was for the women. Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong, but since Candytown comes up with the syllabus, chooses the books, and for the most part runs the conversation, it feels more like there is a slight savior complex. I think that by providing the women with meaningful activities that gives them the option to choose how to and where the conversation leads will help to strip down some of the power complex.
My main proposal is to include activities that give the women the power to choose how the book club conversations play out. In their world everything is chosen for them. They have no control over what food to eat, what they can and cannot have in their cells, where they can and cannot go; it is all already determined for them. By adding these activities to our syllabus we can create individual spaces where nothing is determined, and in that space the we, Candytown College and GingerBread Prison together, have the ability to choose where the conversation leads, and specifically how it plays out.