LOVE OF LEARNING — PEF member Betsy Wilson teaches inmates working toward their GEDs at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility. — Photo by Sherry Halbrook;

Prison teacher helps students unlock door to new lives

By SHERRY HALBROOK
June 16 was graduation day for seven students receiving their GEDs (general equivalency diplomas) at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island.

No one appreciates their struggle and the value of what they have achieved better than the PEF members who taught and encouraged them. Betsy Wilson is one of those teachers.

Wilson was honored this spring with a 2006 Excellence in Education Award given by Staten Island Academy to the community’s top teachers.

Photos at award ceremony by Mike Aboussleman

She was nominated by students in her GED and pre-GED classes at the prison.

The students wouldn’t even have known about the awards if she had not fought to get copies of the local newspaper (seen as contraband by the correctional system) for her classes.

“We’ve got guys here with a zero to second grade reading level,” Wilson said. “This is the last stop, their last chance.

“They fight me tooth-and-nail, some of them. So, I need to make it interesting. I try to make it fun.”

Wilson is not alone in her efforts. She is a member of the Arthur Kill educational program, which really is at the heart of a prisonwide effort to help the inmates gradually learn how to become valued members of their families and their communities.

“I team teach with Ellen Jakobsen,” Wilson said. “She teaches math and science, and I teach the rest.”

Wilson’s wide-open approach can often run against the hard grain of prison rules, but it’s one that allows her to keep pulling new rabbits out of her hat (her latest idea is a “puppy-raising program” that has produced good results at other prisons) to keep drawing her students closer to the world outside prison walls that few of them have really felt at home in.

She starts by teaching the men to respect and rely on themselves and each other.

“I have cooperative learning. They sit at round tables where I encourage them to help each other,” Wilson said.

“They learn how to find where they are on a map, because many of them can’t even recognize North America when they see it.

“Now they have newspapers, so they are all up on current events,” she said. “A friend of mine gave them a set of used encyclopedias, and I teach them how to use it and a dictionary.

“I tell them cursing shows other people they don’t have control of the English language. If they did, they could find better words to express themselves.

“I teach them civics and encourage them to work in their communities when they leave here,” Wilson said.

“Most of them don’t know they can vote, so I teach them about the importance of that and I encourage them to go on to college. I know of at least two of my former students who are in college now.”

In 2003, seven students in one of Wilson’s classes won the chance to participate in a PBS human rights project on “modern-day slavery” conducted by WNET-Channel 13 in New York City.

The students essentially ran the project and Wilson helped by bringing in supplies and resources. From September through June, the class researched human trafficking, child labor, sex slaves and forced labor throughout the world.

The men wrote essays and poems and created art about what they learned.

“It was the hardest thing I ever did,” one of the students commented in an article in the Autumn 2004 issue of DOCS Today, a publication of the state Department of Correctional Services which operates Arthur Kill.

Although he never got beyond fifth grade in public schools, today that student has his GED.

Since the students could not go to Channel 13 in nearby Manhattan to present their project, four WNET staff members came to the prison to meet the class.
“That was their only reward. There was no reason to work on the project, other than they wanted to do it,” Wilson said.

But there was a wealth of subtle rewards — in knowing they had set a goal and reached it; in knowing the bars of their own confinement had not prevented them from exploring a hidden but important issue in the world; in learning many new words and facts and in strengthening their researching and writing skills.

Best of all, they were empowered by the public approval and acceptance of their work.

“The most important thing I can do is try to help someone change their life,” Wilson said. “And if they change, I am also helping their children have better lives.”

The Communicator July/Aug. '06

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