{"id":2122,"date":"2013-06-05T12:05:37","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T12:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=2122"},"modified":"2013-06-07T14:48:27","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T14:48:27","slug":"alabama-prison-arts-education-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=2122","title":{"rendered":"Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alabama<\/a><\/p>\n

Two Auburn Engineering graduate students are participating in a different kind of educational experience in Alabama\u2019s correctional facilities. What they have found is that education goes both ways, and that they are learning as much as they are teaching.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was an average Tuesday in Elmore, Ala., when Eliza Banu<\/strong>, mechanical engineering graduate student, arrived at Elmore Correctional Facility, a men’s medium-minimum security facility. A graduate teaching assistant at Auburn with pure enthusiasm for educating, she was there to teach her first solo course, “Introduction to Engineering and Mechanics Concepts,” to inmates.<\/p>\n

Aubrey Beal<\/strong>, an electrical and computer engineering graduate student, had never instructed his own class before he pulled up to Easterling Correctional Facility in Clio, Ala., a medium security men\u2019s prison, to teach an “Introduction to Vocational Electronics” class to more than 20 students. Nearly 80 inmates signed up to take his class \u2014 an overwhelming response.<\/p>\n

Banu and Beal are the first engineering students to participate in the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project (APAEP), a grant-supported outreach initiative that has brought education and creativity to several of the state’s prisons since it was established in 2003. Administered by the College of Human Sciences, APAEP offers 14-week courses in subjects including poetry, creative writing, literature, performance, Alabama history, drawing and photography to prisoners. For the first time, engineering was added to the slate this spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided to open a university-wide search for graduate students to teach in our program,\u201d says Kyes Stevens, director of APAEP. \u201cWe were originally looking for only one student, but both Eliza and Aubrey applied from engineering, and there was no way we could not accept them both.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Flickr\"<\/a> view  Auburn Engineering<\/a> on flickr   \"Auburn<\/a><\/div><\/div>
\n<\/p>\n

Passion for education<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stevens knew Banu was the perfect fit to teach for APAEP when her response to instructing in a men’s facility was “Oh, that\u2019s OK. I just love teaching.”<\/p>\n

“And that was that,\u201d Stevens says. \u201cBoth of these students have such heart and passion for education and teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banu\u2019s passion for education \u2014 seen in her commitment to every one of her students at both Auburn and Elmore Correctional \u2014 is undeniable as she describes why she applied to teach a course with APAEP.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to do this because I believe in the power of education,\u201d she says. \u201cI believe in the power of reading and being informed. I believe in second chances. I knew this was something I wanted to participate in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having already assisted graduate-level labs and courses in Auburn\u2019s Department of Mechanical Engineering, Banu had an idea of how to run a class. This time, though, she backed up her introduction of engineering concepts to the beginning, explaining the various fields and disciplines of engineering, and describing to her students what an engineer generally does.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talk about how a main part of being an engineer is being able to work in a team, because the students had to do a lot of group projects,\u201d she says. \u201cWe talked about what it means to be a member of a team; how each person has his own role and has to help other members to fulfill the team\u2019s goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In lessons about vectors, velocity, acceleration, forces and equilibrium, Banu put the students\u2019 lesson on teamwork to the test as they constructed bridges made of straws and built towers made of pasta to demonstrate engineering design. \u201cI think they enjoyed the competition,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Many of Banu\u2019s students are in trade school through the prison, but as she explains, the students\u2019 levels of experience vary in the same way they would in any other classroom. Every student\u2019s prior knowledge and experiences differ from the student next to them in some way, with some students even having a background in engineering. One student showed Banu his CAD drawings he made in trade school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis material is hard, and they tell me how hard it is,\u201d Banu says. \u201cThey tell me they are struggling, so I try and help them as much as I can. They\u2019ve made amazing progress. It puts a big smile on my face. I have students who are learning and getting excited about understanding something.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Flickr\"<\/a> view  Auburn Engineering<\/a> on flickr   \"Auburn<\/a><\/div><\/div>
\n<\/p>\n

The art of teaching<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beal saw the call for graduate students to teach in APAEP posted on a friend\u2019s Facebook page. Though he didn\u2019t think courses outside of the arts would be accepted, he wrote a proposal for an electronics course and sent it to Stevens.<\/p>\n

\u201cKyes said my class needed to be accessible,\u201d Beal says. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult because my students have diverse educational backgrounds. Some people have graduated high school and some have a GED, while others have taken a semester or two of community college.\u201d<\/p>\n

After meeting his students, Beal developed a course to introduce science using a fun, question-and-answer approach while utilizing electronics problems and demonstrations as examples. For many students, this was their first science class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI reinforced remedial mathematics by sneaking topics into the electronics problems, so they had a motivation to add, subtract, use exponents and understand algebra,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have talked to the students about the fundamentals, as well as the advantages of using the binary number system in machines and circuits,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

But Beal quickly learned that making concepts accessible did not necessarily mean making them easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I made the mistake of making the problems too easy, thinking that it would make the material more accessible. Students had to read for them and find them, but the answers were there,\u201d he explains. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a whole lot of critical thinking; it was basically whether they could fish through the material, and give me an answer on an assignment easily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beal was not getting thorough homework submissions, although the assignments were easy. He began reading about adult education and found that the material does not need
\nto be easy. If it is, it is less challenging and less valuable to the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of making it accessible was helping them to formulate a good question,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d say, \u2018Let\u2019s reword your question so you get more out of your answer.\u2019 Your answer can only be as good as your question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of the varying educational backgrounds, Beal was often challenged with explaining concepts in different ways to meet everyone\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone asked me, \u2018So why is it that whenever you multiply a positive number times a positive number you get a positive number, a positive times a negative is a negative, a negative times a positive is a negative, but a negative times a negative is a positive?\u2019\u201d Beal recalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to teach that to somebody without much math background, and you have this rule of why that is true, the rule doesn\u2019t mean anything to them,\u201d he explains. \u201cYou can tell them to just remember the rule, or show all these theories and ways to prove that it\u2019s true, but that gets too complicated for teaching remedial mathematics, so I just used a circuit to show them. I have to have so many examples ready for each lecture and concept.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then . . . Beal started giving his students the hard problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw results from that, which was counterintuitive to me,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought I was making it less accessible, but they weren\u2019t coming to class to learn something easy. I almost underestimated the students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pushing the limits more, and proving what he found to be true, Beal gave his students a hard take-home test \u2014 and one student scored better than he did. \u201cI was so proud,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\"Flickr\"<\/a> view  Auburn Engineering<\/a> on flickr   \"Auburn<\/a><\/div><\/div>
\n<\/p>\n

The appreciation of knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Banu and Beal describe their teaching experiences in their respective facilities, you would not know that their students were state prisoners unless you asked. Both spoke of their hard-working, excited, eager-to-learn students with smiles on their faces as they told of their successes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is so important to teach in prisons, specifically because you are enabling graduate students to teach in an atypical setting,\u201d says Stevens. \u201cThink about students at Auburn. Some are a little distracted because they have a lot going on in their life, or some may take for granted that they are here in college. Prison students don\u2019t take [APAEP] classes for granted. They see education as a mechanism to turn their lives around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, APAEP truly does ignite a spark for learning. Banu tells of a student who let her know that he hated trigonometry and math. But, through her class, he was challenged and is eager to go back to trade school and take a math class because he saw the practical applications of math.<\/p>\n

Banu recalls another student who could hardly wait to solve the next problem or attend the next class. \u201cHe would just understand everything,\u201d she says. \u201cHe would take the assignment I gave the class that was written for two weeks, and I would tell them to do only half of it, and he would do the whole thing. He wanted more work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students have asked Banu if there is going to be a part two of her class. \u201cI was surprised!\u201d she says. \u201cIt took them a long time to get used to the math and learn to focus on the concepts, so now that we have taken that barrier away and they are comfortable with the material, it\u2019s a huge victory for them. They used to get discouraged during the math part and I would give them the \u2018don\u2019t quit\u2019 speech, and they would tell me \u2018I\u2019m not going to quit! This is too fun!\u2019 Now they compete with each other to answer questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Beal\u2019s classroom, huge strides have been made with his students, and the vocational electronics class is the highlight of their week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really look forward to coming to class and learning more, and they come with a lot of great questions,\u201d Beal says. \u201cThey think about the concepts and there\u2019s a lot of discussion. There seems to be a different type of enthusiasm about the material than the undergraduate labs that I have experience assisting. Students at a university have more distractions and take mandatory classes in contrast to prison students who have an entire week to work with the material and treat it more recreationally,\u201d Beal says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe APAEP students ask different types of questions, more for the sake of the material and the science as opposed to a means to an end,” he adds. “An excited amateur has very fruitful work whereas an adult professional may be a little jaded because it\u2019s mandatory. Any time something\u2019s mandatory, I think people may tend to lose interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beal\u2019s students are hoping for a follow-up course as well, in addition to the same course, so their friends who could not enroll can have the same opportunity they had.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a high demand for this class, and I think it\u2019s because it\u2019s from Auburn University. Auburn\u2019s name seemed to carry weight, and they appreciated that it was from Auburn,\u201d Beal says. \u201cWe have a positive reputation and it gave a lot of value to the material.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevens hopes to find funds to support more engineering courses taught by the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, so more graduate students can have the same opportunity as Banu and Beal.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeaching with APAEP has transformed the lives of graduate students, as well as the students they educate,\u201d she says. \u201cWe want to make this teaching opportunity available for other gifted graduate students.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Banu and Beal saw in their classrooms, and as Auburn engineers have experienced for generations, there are hurdles in life that can be overcome, no matter what barriers stand in the way.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for more information on the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project<\/p>\n

<\/div>
\"Flickr\"<\/a> view  Auburn Engineering<\/a> on flickr   \"Auburn<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Auburn Engineering graduate students are participating in a different kind of educational experience in Alabama\u2019s correctional facilities. What they have found is that education goes both ways, and that they are learning as much as they are teaching. 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