For
those of you who don't know I'm currently at university studying for a PGCE in
Post Compulsory Education. Basically, I'm training to be a college
lecturer. During my course induction we were asked if we were interested in
offender learning and I naively ticked the box to say yes without giving it a
second thought.
A few days later two visitors came to university to give a talk about their roles as teachers in a local prison. Prior to them arriving my mind was already made up, no way on this earth would you get me through the gates of a men’s prison to go and teach. I had a head full of preconceptions about prisons but hey most of us are guilty of that when the nearest a lot of us have ever got to a prison is a TV programme or film.
The talk was really persuasive as I sat there listening I slowly become more and more relaxed and open to the idea so much, so I put my name down for a visit. Well yesterday was the big day a friend from uni picked me up and off we went for our day in the prison. First impressions were totally what we didn't expect, the place didn't have that 'prison look' to it. In my head I was expecting two huge metal doors and high walls with a watch tower overlooking the whole prison.
We sat in the prison cafe which is 100% ran by the inmates, they order all the food and cook it. I sat there drinking a cup of tea and honestly, if it wasn't for the reminder of the metal doors constantly being locked then I'd have thought it was in a Starbucks or Costa. The inmate who took our orders and served us was incredibly polite and professional and it turns out he used to have his own cafe on the outside.
Before I knew it the time had come for me to go sit in a class full of inmates for the first time in my life. I was escorted to the classroom with another girl from my university. The teacher introduced to the class and well boy did they give me a hard time, they asked for the female student instead and a few shouted at me and told me to f**k off because they didn't want me in the classroom. Obviously I felt incredibly uncomfortable and I could never have imagined a worse possible welcome.
I'll be honest and admit for the first half hour or so I despised the inmate who was rude and swore at me and all I wanted to do was get up and go but I decided to be the bigger man and stayed and it was without doubt the one of the best decisions I've ever made.
I stayed for a few hours and got talking to all the inmates, some were incredibly friendly and before I knew it, I was relaxed and forgot they were inmates and as the day went on the 'inmate' label began to fade away and I just saw them as any other men you'd come across on the street. The day has changed my mindset of offender learning and challenged all my preconceptions of inmates. To my surprise, that one inmate who was initially rude to me turned out to be one of the nicest, he engaged in conversation with me and asked me lots of questions and as the lesson finished he got up to leave and asked if he could shake my hand.
I loved my time spent at the prison so much so that I've put my name forward for a placement there to become a teacher. Offender learning is something I didn't even know existed and now I can't stop talking about it and singing its praises. I just hope society can become more open-minded to education within prisons, these men and women are not animals to be caged up, they are humans with feelings just like you and me. How on earth can we expect these inmates to become rehabilitated when they are given nothing but negative labels and faced with prejudice views.
The judging doesn't lie with us, it lies with the
jury and judge.
