Space Behind Bars: Teaching Earth and Space Science in an Arizona Prison

Abstract:

Incarcerated populations across the U.S. suffer from inadequate access to education. This persists despite increasing evidence that education programs create positive outcomes such as lowering rates of unemployment and recidivism, or return to prison, after release. In order to address this education gap, we developed an Earth and Space science course to teach to inmates at Arizona State Prison Complex - Eyman, a state prison for men in Florence, AZ. The course, which was first offered in the Spring of 2019, covers topics in Earth and planetary science and astrophysics. It is completely graduate student-run, giving early-career scientists a unique opportunity to design and teach classes. Thus, our program has two primary objectives: (1) help an underserved population of students develop science literacy and critical thinking skills that are useful upon re-entry into society and (2) provide graduate students with an opportunity to gain relevant teaching experience in their scientific discipline.

In order to address (2), our class utilizes a team-teaching model in which pairs of volunteer teachers design and teach each class and receive feedback from the other volunteers in the program. We have found that giving and receiving feedback from peers is vital to learning effective teaching strategies and science communication skills. As an added challenge, classes are limited by prison rules against the use of computers, projectors, maps, and other teaching materials that are standard in modern science classrooms. Although this may seem like a significant obstacle, we have found that moving away from lecture-based teaching has forced us to develop more creative activities that lead to improved student engagement. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will not be able to return to the prison to teach. Unlike many academic institutions that have moved to online-learning, restrictions in available technology has forced us to rely on the U.S. Postal Service “snail-mail” to communicate with our students (a.k.a. correspondence learning). In this presentation, we will discuss barriers to learning and teaching in a prison setting, both in general and especially during the pandemic. We will also discuss the benefits of a team-teaching model as well as positive outcomes for both volunteer teachers and incarcerated students.