Hey, I’m back! As I mentioned in my What I’m Up To This School Year post, I have been teaching a college Intermediate Algebra course to people incarcerated at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. I just wrapped up my first semester there, and wanted to share Three Lessons from Three Months Teaching in Prison.

Lesson 1: Be Yourself

When I first went inside the prison for orientation in August, the other new volunteers and I got to learn about the program from several prisoners. I got paired with a guy who goes by Focus (one of many absolutely awesome nicknames) and his number one piece of advice was to be myself. He said a lot of people volunteering in prisons feel like they have to button up their personalities and be extra professional. Focus shared that he and his peers on the inside are surrounded by so much drudgery, loneliness and pain, so when their professors come in as their authentic selves, it is often the highlight of their day. For me, being myself as a teacher has always been defined in the context of working with tweens, where I have a built a classroom persona designed to engage them. It was so fun morphing that version of myself to fit in an adult classroom. That meant continuing to rock my signature suspenders, dishing stupid math puns whenever I could, and animatedly trying to make my love for mathematics infectious. Showing up as my authentic self each week made my time at San Quentin this semester the highlight of my Fall.

Lesson 2: Mistakes Are (Still) Beautiful

Being myself as a math teacher also meant engaging students’ mindsets, and trying to deliver lessons that required folks to not just “do” math, but to be mathematical. That means making mistakes – lots of them. And not only that, but celebrating and learning from them! Turns out, I was a great role model for this, because Intermediate Algebra is hard. The course covered everything from linear functions to logarithms and the problems often took dozens of steps to solve with lots of room for errors. Which I made often. It took some time for the guys to “forgive” me for this, because by-and-large, they really value clarity and accuracy, which I can respect. But over time, and with my persistence, we built a culture where my mistakes were celebrated and turned into learning experiences. Many of the students were able to carry this into their own mathematical work as well.

But mathematical mistakes aren’t the only kind I made. Teaching such a unique population also presented unexpected opportunities for non-mathematical mistakes. While I could drop f-bombs at will (but did so sparingly to great comedic effect), there are some words that may feel commonplace on the outside, but have very different meanings inside. One example came up when I was teaching the box-method as an alternative to FOIL for expanding algebraic expression. I drew my 2×2 grid on the Smart Board (yup, there are Smart Boards in San Quentin) and began to teach: “in the first cell, you put the product of x and 4, which is 4x.” But as soon as I said “cell” the air sucked out of the room as I could practically hear people processing the meaning of the world cell outside of their everyday context. I instantly flipped my language, calling them “boxes” and filed that moment away for the future.

I’ll share one more – when teaching the quadratic formula, and doing my best to be my authentic self, I took a risk and sang the song… yes that song. The first time through was awkward, but I am nothing if not persistent. The second time around, I got nearly everyone in on it with me, and wouldn’t you know it, we had a room full of grown men singing, laughing, and loving a moment of pure mathematical silliness. When the moment passed, I shared “thanks for that, guys. When I do this with my middle schoolers, most of them just roll their eyes. Anyways, let’s solve some quadratics.” As I’m getting into the next problem, a student raised his hand and asked “wait, did you say you do this stuff with middle schoolers? Aren’t they like 12 years old?” What was meant as an offhand attempt at humor morphed into an awkward moment. I floundered through a comment about inequity in the education system and silicon valley parents throwing money into their kids’ math educations, and I got a few nods as I spoke, but I don’t think it mattered much. I filed this moment away as well, and will have to be much more thoughtful about what I share in the future.

Lesson 3: Check Your Bias

Be honest with yourself: when you picture a class full of incarcerated people, is there an image in your mind? What and who are you picturing? What experiences have you had that fed that image? Many stereotypes about incarcerated people pervade society, but I’m here to tell you they’re meaningless. The only thing that you really know for sure about these people as a whole is that they were sentenced to do time in prison. That’s it. You don’t know what they were sentenced for. You don’t know how old they were when it happened. You don’t know if they actually did it. And you definitely don’t know their favorite food, what sports teams they root for, what book they’re reading, or what people they miss the most. In the words of the great Bryan Stevenson, “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” I hope the following story captures this fact.

On the very first day of class, I did one of my favorite check-ins: a thumb-o-meter. I asked the class to dial their thumb-o-meters to tell me how they feel about Math class:

• Thumbs up: I would rather be in Math class than anywhere else on earth
• Thumbs down: I would rather be anywhere else on earth than in this Math class right now

They could dial their thumbs either direction, or anywhere in between. As expected in a room full of 25 people, the thumbs covered the full range. One guy, Wally, had his thumb up with a bright smile. I quickly learned that not only does he love math, but he is also quite natural with it. He showed up to each class having already done the entire unit for the day, and enjoyed playfully correcting me every time I made one of my many mistakes.

In contrast to Wally was George, sitting next to him. On my thumb-o-meter, George stood his entire 6’6″ 280 pound self up, raised both thumbs down and declared “I f*ckin’ hate math!” Despite his proclamation, George didn’t miss a single class, and busted it each week in an attempt to pass the course.

In September, after the first midterm exam, we passed out progress reports. The passing grade for the class was a C-. Unsurprisingly, Wally hadn’t lost a single point on any assignment, while George was getting a C+. The two of them were hanging around after class and I checked in with George. I reminded him of my two-thumbs-down first impression and asked how he was feeling seeing his grade. He said that this was the best grade he had ever gotten in Math in his entire life, and he didn’t seem to believe it was real. I asked him what changed this time, and he pointed straight at Wally. “This guy,” he said. “I would be flunking if Wally didn’t take this class to help me out.” It turns out Wally had placed out of Intermediate Algebra and could have skipped ahead to the Pre-Calculus class. He enrolled specifically so that he could support George and his other friends.

What happened in George’s and Wally’s lives that landed them in San Quentin? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. But the truth is, it doesn’t matter. Not to me as their algebra teacher. I don’t know what I was expecting when I signed up to teach at San Quentin, but this level of empathy and loyalty wasn’t something I’d considered. Whatever biases I brought with me, they offered no benefit over just getting to know my students and doing my best to teach them mathematics.