Abolitionist teaching is one of the most effective weapons against racist pedagogy and more broadly racism itself. Abolitionist teaching must develop into a grand strategy for building, transforming, and replacing institutions, systems, and the racist ideas upon which they are founded. It must articulate a vision that energizes and guides the masses into collective action according to a definitive worldview.

This workshop will equip participants with the skills needed to engage in college selection, application, matriculation, finance, and completion of a post-release training and/or education program. The participant will explore the characteristics, challenges and benefits of being a traditional, non- traditional, residential, commuter, degree seeking, or auditing student.

While many writing instructors advocate for the value of memoir and life writing in the prison writing classroom, others, such as Anna Plemons, argue against requiring our students, explicitly or implicitly, to produce “individual narratives of transformation.” My intervention into this scholarly debate uses critical genre theory to argue for teaching redemption narratives as genre in the prison writing classroom. I will argue that rather than simply avoiding redemption narratives, composition instructors within prison college programs can better serve students by making explicit the character and origin of these narratives so that students may engage with them critically and adapt them to their own uses.

Project Rebound at Cal State Los Angeles has derived a novel way of supporting and guiding returning citizens as they build their futures through higher education. Our approach seeks to facilitate more than the mere mechanics of transitioning, graduating, and hopefully landing a job. Programs on college campuses that serve formerly incarcerated students will thrive from what we have called the Sankofa effect--having the potential to change lives and impact communities.

This workshop will provide an overview of the statewide system of higher education in prison as envisioned and created by the Governor’s Correctional Education Initiative. This workshop will discuss the statewide model, implementation process, and lessons learned through collaboration with multiple state entities. An overview of the system will highlight features that are unique to the educational landscape of Tennessee and how those supports assisted in creating additional credit-bearing opportunities for students both in and outside of the carceral setting. Additionally, a brief overview will be provided of the most frequently requested advocacy documents and data points that assisted in establishing this system.

Our discussion will center on the experiences of students and educators in one of the most technologically advanced HEP programs in the country which affect both in myriad ways. Presented from the student and educator perspectives, presenters focus on the perils and promises of technology from their personal and collective experiences. Our discussion will also offer practical solutions to the perils of tech and suggest ways by which technology’s promise may be bolstered, answering the question, “What is to be done?”

When many colleges and universities across the country determined that they could no longer provide educational opportunities to those incarcerated due to lack of funding and the unavailability of pell grants, Villanova University persevered. Based in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Villanova University continued to offer those incarcerated the opportunity to obtain an education in Liberal Arts at Graterford and now Phoenix prison. In this workshop, we hope to create a space and facilitate dialogue that will critically analyze the utility of a liberal arts degree in prison. Additionally, we hope to explore how a liberal arts degree provides incarcerated people with effective tools to strategize, collectively organize, and build resistance toward oppressive systems and power structures. 

In this discussion, we are outlining the obstacles that the Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound (FEPPS) has faced in our journey to provide education in the age of technology within the confines of Washington Corrections Center for Women. We are interested in the process that other programs use to provide technology to their students and how they have overcome the obstacles they may have faced.