(music)
The prison environment...
I'll isn't
quite with people on the outside might think it is.
There are those people,
those cases that might seem
harsh, or
lost, if you will,
lost causes.
Generally,
most people in prison have
strayed away from something positive in life, people who have
lost their way, seeking something
to defines themselves with. EJP's mission
is to develop a model college in prison program. There's a lot evidence that
shows that for re-entering men and women who go back to the communities from
which they come,
having a college degree or a college education, being able to contribute in
real,
beneficial ways to those places is going to have an impact
on those communities, and we're not just talking about any communities, we're
talking,
typically about the most disadvantaged, most impoverished, most marginalized,
economically and politically. Given a choice about where we as academics place
our attention and
put our focus and our energies, it seems to me
so obvious that we ought to be paying attention
to people who are incarcerated, because by educating them, we make a real
impact to our communities and to the well-being of society at large.
So EJP is part of the College of Education.
We believe in higher education for anybody who wants higher education as a
matter of social justice.
I think it's important for change to always be possible
and if
any social goods including education
are hoarded by any one group or any
even few groups, then it makes it harder for change to ever happen.
If I was,
I was a concerned citizen, what would I rather have, people in prison
doing nothing, occupying their time
with the thoughts or habits that they brought
from the streets to prison, and allow them to get worse,
or actually give a chance for an individual to better himself
And give himself freedom, to not just think about himself, but to think about the
consequences he has on his community, his family,
and give him the opportunity to become a better person.
You get up, if you have dayroom at 8 o'clock in the morning,
you come out for dayroom,
for an hour from 8-9, then you locked back up, then you go to lunch, you come back, you locked back up
If you don't have no job, of if you're not in school, then you
just in your cell, all the way until they run dinner.
You in your cell at least 21 hours out of 24.
EJP operates differently than most prison education programs do. It's more than just courses, it's
more than the students coming to sit
in a classroom for 3 hours and then leaving again.
They come back to participate in resource room times, or to participate
in student meetings and student committees
and extracurricular activities. It's possible for a EJP student to spend
five days a week, Monday through Friday,
in the education building involved in EJP work. In order to be eligible
for EJP, a student has to have sixty credit
hours of
undergraduate work. We tend to have students who
are not only serving longer sentences, but are
towards the end
because many were incarcerated when they were teenagers
and have had to work through getting their GED
and getting the 60 credit hours while they're inside. We're not offering
a light version of the kind of educational we offer students on the traditional
campus
at Urbana-Champaign, it's not a watered-down version.
This is the same level of instruction, the same quality of instruction
that we provide to students at Urbana-Champaign.
OK, it's act 5 scene 2 - a solemn air.
"A solemn air and the best comforter To an unsettled fancy cure thy brains" We have a theater initiative,
which we didn't expect to have. It grew really organically
from one of our course offerings. Carol Symes
taught a course called Shakespeare's World's, so she asked her students
during the course of the semester to have some
sort of performative assignment.
First, the students resisted - they did not want to do anything that involved in reading
Shakespeare out loud.
They felt awkward with the language, they felt awkward
with the genre, but they quickly got over their awkwardness, and soon started asking
for more,
and by the end of the semester they asked her if they couldn't continue to meet, and if
they couldn't put on a play.
"My brace of lords, were I so minded,
I here could pluck his highness' frown upon you And justify you traitors:
at this time I will tell no tales."
She brought out certain things in us, that many of us
probably didn't realize we had ourselves.
We have a lot of instructors that are involved in the program; they're all-volunteer,
and every semester we have between
60 and 70 people on campus who teach in the program in some capacity,
some of them are for-credit instructors, others teach
workshops: science, math, or writing workshops.
Others are involved with our English as a Second Language Program.
My name is Orlando Mayorga; I'm part of the language partners program here at
Danville
Our program is an ESL program
that is teaching non-english speaking people how to speak English.
as part of language partners, my job is to
make lessons that are interesting
and that are engaging of the students that we have.
An environment were both teaching and learning occurs between teacher and
student
is like an ideal environment, and that's one of the things that I really enjoy
about language partner, is that
we're able to practice that, you know - our class is more like a family
we've come to, like,
love these guys, you know, we've come to love each other, and that's kinda weird
coming from a person who's in prison, but
it just comes naturally, you know, you come to care for these people.
I was doing a twenty year stint. I landed in Danville Correctional Center,
and that's where I met
Rebecca Ginsburg, and the alumni staff.
I started taking classes there. What I thought it was to me, it
showed me my worth. I had been in there take classes for a long time,
you know how things get dormant, then it was EJP that
breathed life back into me. I started taking more classes, started getting more
active in education,
and I think it's a mind changing set program, I think it forces you
to engage. I came as a prison not
having any direct, not really caring
about anything but myself and how
my time would affect me, but this program has allowed me see that
the world is bigger than just focusing on self.
Most EJP students long ago
changes from being teenager that they were
when they committed the act that they are currently incarcerated for to being men
who are serious of purpose and quite intent
on making up for what
their past mistakes have cost them, cost their families,
and cost their communities. What they seek is the opportunity,
the means to be able to become that person
Our hope that people will see the possibilities
in giving
incarcerated men and women
an opportunity. Of course many of us have committed
crimes, and as penance for those crimes, we are
in these place; however,
everyone has done something that they're not proud of, that they're totally not proud of.
One of the EJP instructors
once said that he always asked people to think about
the worst thing that they've ever done, to imagine themselves
bring defined for the rest of their lives by the worst thing
they've ever done, and that's the experience.
So to give a person an opportunity, the same opportunity you would like, to say
well listen, I'm gonna give this guy or this woman the benefit of the doubt,
and see what they have to offer, because, you know,
many of us still have something to offer. Open your eyes,
open your hearts, and give people a chance.
Everybody makes mistakes. How we get up after, what we do after those mistakes determines
where our stars lie.