What I Wish Policymakers Understood About Teaching in Prison
A letter, a mirror, and a masterclass, all in one. Sunday Morning Coffee | Past the Edges Consulting
Dear Policymakers,
I know you’re busy. I know the headlines are loud, the pressure is real, and the timelines are unforgiving. I know you’re balancing budgets, responding to public fear, and trying to show results in election cycles that don’t leave much room for nuance.
But I want to invite you, just for a moment, into a prison classroom.
Not the version that shows up in reports or ribbon-cutting photos.
The real one.
First, Please Understand This: Teaching in Prison Is Not “School, But Louder”
A prison classroom is not a traditional classroom with security added on. It’s a learning space embedded inside a system designed for control, compliance, and risk management. Bells don’t ring because learning time is up, they ring because count is happening. Classes don’t end because objectives were met, they end because movement was canceled. Attendance doesn’t drop because students lost interest; it drops because housing units were locked down.
Educators aren’t just teaching content. They’re navigating unpredictability, power dynamics, trauma histories, and institutional constraints, often simultaneously.
So when policy assumes smooth implementation, uninterrupted instruction, or linear progress, it tells me you haven’t been in the room.
Here’s the Mirror: Your Policies Are Teaching Too
Every policy sends a message.
When classes are canceled without notice → education is optional.
When teachers are excluded from planning → expertise doesn’t matter.
When success is measured only by GED pass rates → people are data points.
When compliance outweighs learning → checking boxes beats growth.
You may not intend these lessons, but students and staff learn them anyway. Policy is curriculum, leadership is pedagogy, and systems teach, whether you mean them to or not.
What We’re Actually Teaching (Even When the Curriculum Says Otherwise)
In prison classrooms, students are learning things no standards document names:
Whether adults are consistent
Whether effort is worth it
Whether mistakes lead to growth or punishment
Whether dignity survives under pressure
Whether the future is something to plan for or something to fear
Education behind bars is as much about restoring trust in systems as it is about literacy, numeracy, or credentials, and trust, once broken, is hard to rebuild.
What I Wish You Knew About Learners
Most incarcerated learners:
want to do better than their past
are navigating underdeveloped executive function
carry significant trauma histories
have experienced repeated educational failure
are exhausted from surviving
They aren’t resistant to learning. They’re cautious about hope. Policies that assume motivation without addressing capacity set people up to fail, and then blame them when they do.
What I Wish You Knew About Teachers
Correctional educators aren’t interchangeable line items.
They are:
behavior specialists without the title
trauma-informed practitioners without the training hours
counselors without the caseload protections
system translators for students trying to survive complexity
When policies ignore teacher voice, increase paperwork without purpose, or add mandates without support, burnout isn’t a mystery, it’s an outcome. If you want better student outcomes, start with better working conditions for educators.
A Masterclass in What Actually Helps
If policy truly wants education in prison to work, here’s what the evidence and lived experience keeps saying:
1. Predictability Matters More Than Perfection: Stable schedules, clear communication, and fewer last-minute changes do more for learning than any shiny new initiative.
2. Measure What Matters: Completion, persistence, skill growth, and confidence-building matter, not just credentials.
3. Fund Training, Not Just Programs: Trauma, brain development, executive function, and adult learning theory aren’t “nice to have.” They’re foundational.
4. Involve Educators Early: Teachers are not an implementation afterthought. They are the strategy. And please, hire people who are trained, certified educators.
5. Design for Humans, Not Ideals: People learn in fits and starts. Progress is rarely linear. Policies should reflect that reality.
The Hard Truth
You can’t legislate transformation without understanding context, or demand outcomes without providing conditions, or expect dignity to grow in systems that quietly erode it.
And you cannot fix what you refuse to see up close.
What I’m Asking
Come sit in the classroom.
Listen more than you speak.
Ask educators what’s getting in the way and believe them.
Write policy that reflects how people actually learn, not how spreadsheets prefer they would.
☕ Final Sip
Education in prison works, not because it’s easy, but because it’s human. When policymakers understand that, policy becomes a lever for possibility instead of a barrier to it.
Until then, educators will keep doing what they’ve always done:
teach anyway.
care anyway.
believe anyway.
And hope someone, somewhere, is finally listening.
