Work is due on this Saturday (3/21/20) at 1400 hours (2pm eastern time zone). Work needs to be completed according to the APA writing style. This assignment should be 3 pages.

As you read, make notes about your reactions, assumptions, implications, arguments, questions.   

Additional Questions to consider as you read/write: Rice and Beans, Tacos, and defining “your” culture. What are some of the ways you answer the question: “What does it mean to be a member of your culture?” What does that look like to an outsider? What makes your culture different from others?

The idea of personal responses are to engage in thoughtful internal dialogue about the idea of global issues and education. You should attempt, in your understanding of the readings to get “underneath” what you read in order to understand the social, political, and cultural underpinnings of the issues.  Reading critically involves more than understanding the words or liking or disliking the texts; critical reading requires reflection.

***Critically respond and answer the following questions for each of the stories in the attached document:
 

(a) what are the texts’ assumptions about the phenomena being discussed? 

(b)  What are the implications of the assumptions and/or the arguments? 

(c)  What is at stake in the text’s arguments for the authors and for you?

(d)  Who (or what) are the authors arguing for or against? 

(e)  How do the authors construct and articulate their arguments?

(f)  How do the texts “fit” (or not fit) in relation to your own thought and practice? 

(g) What questions did you find yourself asking after doing the reading? Please do not simply summarize the readings.

Write a critical response connecting the content from the text with your responses to the prompts. 

The response should be written in a narrative form that is evident of engaging with the content and reflection.

CriticalResponse Rubric:

Category 0 1 1.5 2

Timeliness

late On time

Delivery of Critical
Response

Utilizes poor
spelling and
grammar; appear
“hasty”

Errors in
spelling and
grammar
evidenced

Few
grammatical or
spelling errors
are noted

Consistently uses
grammatically
correct response
with rare
misspellings

Organization

Unorganized. A
summary of the
chapter.
Unorganized in
ideas and
structure.

Some evidence
of organization.
Unorganized in
either ideas or
structure.

Primarily
organized with
occasional lack
of organization
in either ideas
or structure.

Clear
organization.
Ideas are clear
and follow a
logical
organization.
Structure of the
response is easy
to follow.

Relevance of
Response
(understanding the
chapter)

Lacks clear
understanding of
the chapter

Occasionally off
topic; short in
length and offer
no further
insight into the
topic. Lacking 2
or more of the
following: (1)
The text
assumptions (2)
implications of
the assumptions
(3) what the
author is
arguing for (4)
how the author
constructs their
argument

Related to
chapter
content; lacks
one of the
following: (1)
The text
assumptions (2)
implications of
the
assumptions (3)
what the author
is arguing for
(4) how the
author
constructs their
argument

Clear
understanding of
chapter content
and includes all of
the following:(1)
The text
assumptions (2)
implications of the
assumptions (3)
what the author is
arguing for (4)
how the author
constructs their
argument

Expression within
the response
(evidence of
critical thinking)

Does not express
opinions or ideas
about the topic

Unclear
connection to
topic evidenced
in minimal
expression of
opinions or
ideas

Opinions and
ideas are stated
with occasional
lack of
connection to
topic

Expresses
opinions and
ideas in a clear
and concise
manner with
obvious
connection to
topic

Story 1:Dealing with whiteness to empower students to fight for common good

by Mary Alison Burger

The collective struggle presupposes collective responsibility . . . Yes, every- body will have to be compromised in the fight for common good . . . there are no innocents and no onlookers. We all have dirty hands; we are all soiling them in the swamps of our country and in the terrifying emptiness of our brains. Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor (Fanon, 1968, p. 199).

I am an upper-middle-class, college-educated white woman. I say that first because it is a vitally important signifier when discussing issues regarding race, class, and gender. It is important because it frames my entire reality. It is important because it requires a constant, tireless vigilance, to check, and recheck my privilege, my perspective, and my input on issues that do not affect me directly. It is vital to make sure that I am not engaging in the very oppression I am trying to oppose. I am an upper-middle-class, college-educated white woman, and I am doing the best that I can to combat, as an educator, what critical educational scholar, Joan Wynne (2012), identifies as the “isms,” of sexism, racism, and classism, through a tireless advocacy for an “anti-oppressive” education (Shim, 2012).

If I ever encounter a person of my ethnicity claiming to be completely void of racism, I am immediately suspicious of them because I believe it is not possible. It is not possible because the entire premise of our U.S. history is constructed around the ideas of white male privilege, imperialism, and a “pernicious” white hegemonic dominance that is pervasive in every corner of our existence, particularly in that of education (Castagno 2013). It is not possible, because as a white person, I am bombarded with both active and passive racist messages, suggestions, and acculturation from the moment I am born. I am surrounded by encryptions of racism in day-to-day life that encourage me to keep in place institutional structures that, every day, limit people of color’s upward mobility and civic participation in a social environment. Jenna Shim. in her article.

“Pierre Bourdieu and intercultural education: It is not just about lack of knowledge about others,” (2012) notes “We are not the sole authors of our perceptions, thoughts, and (re)actions because we are all inescapably constituted within a variety of historically constituted social and political discourses (p. 213).” As extensions of a past full of slavery, oppression, Jim Crow and segregation, we are all agents in the habitus (p. 213) of racism. It is hardwired into our history, so, it seems to me that probably no white person can truly be “above” racism. There is no such thing. So what now?

Coming to terms with my role in the African-American liberation movement has garnered some honest and challenging questions: What can I do? Where does a young white woman fit in this struggle for equity? What can I truly do to join my black brothers and sisters in this fight to free America from racism, without getting in their way? Wynne perfectly captures and identifies the “schizophrenic conundrum,” of being a white antiracist, trying to, as she aptly puts, “finding-while-fighting my place in the national scheme of white supremacy—snarled in the web of veiled utterances that protect it” (p. xiii). She asks a question I have asked myself over and over. “How do I disentangle my tongue twisted for decades in making sounds sustained for hundreds of years in the dismissive dominant discourse?” (p. xiii). I believe the answer to her question is an intensely complicated one beyond the scope of this essay, but there are two simple things that I do know that have led me to some form of action—first and foremost, racism is a white issue, and what I mean by this is, it is an issue of white people, either blatantly ignoring, or lacking knowledge and sensitivity to the historical mistreatment, discrimination, oppression, liberation, rebellions, and triumphs of African-Americans that are still pervasive today.

Secondly, as a white woman I have white privilege, a tool that I can use to my advantage, as it grants me the accessibility to talk to other white people about these issues. Knowing these things, I’ve developed a boundless sense of personal responsibility, to use my accumulated knowledge as tools to attempt to break down these hegemonic structures, and an understanding that it is my duty to use my privilege as a platform for advocacy rather than one of oppression. I feel that the most sinister acts of racism are not those enacted out of ignorance, but out of knowing better, and opting instead to stay silent and allow injustices to continue. As Frantz Fanon’s quote in the heading states “Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor.”

I feel my role in this struggle is to do what my brothers and sisters of color might not do, for fear of being type-cast as the social trope of “the angry black individual” (vis-à-vis the symbolism of Richard Wright’s (2005) character of Bigger Thomas in Native Son). It is my position to be as belligerent and vocal about these issues as possible, to speak out, and speak up, and to interrupt the cultural pervasiveness of racism at every opportunity that I can.

Naturally learning to be an antiracist is not an overnight metamorphosis, but a constant and ongoing learning process that requires a large degree of patience, listening, and humility. There is an important and necessary amount of research and background knowledge that must be in place, in order to be an effective agent for change. Avoiding neo-liberalism, paternal- ism, projection, and being prepared to own up to an error is a studious and ongoing practice.

I was fortunate enough to have been raised by a mother who encouraged me from the moment I had a blood-beating heart that every human life is of equal value irrespective of any kind of “difference” they may have. Although this ideological and egalitarian belief was certainly over simplistic and lack- ing critical finesse, as my mother was not an academic, she was the catalyst that ultimately ignited, in me, an overwhelming and powerful indignation for bigotry of any kind that followed me into adulthood.

Still though, I have stumbled along throughout my own journey, misspoken, misunderstood, and made embarrassing mistakes. As an undergraduate, I entered into the University of Florida, staunchly vocal about my opposition to any form of discrimination, and quickly began to recognize that my passion and outspokenness for social justice issues sacrificed my likability among my white peers. Because of this, I began to gravitate to the black community, sharing a situation similar to the one Dr. Joan Wynne (2012) explains in her Introduction to Confessions of a White Educator: Stories in search of justice and diversity:

Because my parents philosophically stood against racism and segregation, as a family we lived in contradiction to the society we were born into. No one . . . seemed to share the same world view. Although my white skin advantaged and protected me, I became accustomed to feeling intellectually and politically alienated . . . only in the black community could I have possibly found a large number of like-minded people (p. xi).

As a voracious reader and writer, whose very soul resides in literature, I eventually found myself in a performance poetry organization, to which I was the only white member. Sharing an equal love for language, the members became not just my close friends but my family. We performed not only on campus, but within the Gainesville community, almost always at all African-American events. I entered these situations with a common, misguided belief that many young white people harbor, that being an anti-racist means being “color blind,” an ignorant and naïve concept that if we ignore race altogether, ergo racism will vanish with it. Oftentimes, this subject would come up at length, and I was frequently confronted with discussions, exchanges, questions, and sometimes outright confrontations about race. I was blessed to receive tutelage from several African-American mentors willing to explain to me, at length, the things that, as a white woman, I just could never understand. It became obvious to me quickly that race was not something that one could just “ignore” and that my concept of colorblind sameness was just as damaging, if not more so, than the acts of blatant racism to which I was so opposed.

So I listened. I listened and I learned. I didn’t know it at the time, but these conversations would become the cornerstone of a platform for equity that I would carry with me for life. One that recognized that colorblind sameness was not preventing racism, but promoting it, by pretending it does not hap- pen; something I could opt to do as a white person, but someone of color cannot. One that recognized a glaring characteristic of privilege, a blind- ness to itself; and one that recognized that a truly equitable world is not one of homogeneousness and uniformity, or colorblind sameness, but one that embraces all cultural identities, while granting them equity and opportunity in every conceivable way. These were all powerful lessons, ones that I owe my deepest gratitude to my friends for having the patience to share with me. It illustrates that the knowledge that I hold so dear is not information that I have come upon by accident and demonstrates the necessity of listening and learning in order to truly operate as an agent for change. But even now I am still learning. This essay itself is a careful reflection and amassment of all I have learned so far, and I am not nearly done, I will never be done.

To me, it is a devastating injustice that amongst white communities, our environment is so saturated in discriminatory practice that consciousness is more elusive than ignorance. It is a loathsome truth that I did not have to directly address race or its social consequences until I chose to do so. I feel that this is a gross reflection of negligence that permeates how we are educating our young people. So I have decided that a second component and responsibility to my role as a white antiracist, is to work towards, as Shim (2012) puts, an “anti-oppressive” education, or one geared towards deconstructing these damaging narratives.

While I acknowledged above that racism is a “white” issue, and that it is important as a white anti-racist to continually reach out to white people, I also feel that another area where I need to explore is why we are consistently failing our black and brown youth in our schools. So I want to teach, and I want to teach the disenfranchised. I want to teach NOT because I want to “save people.” I am not a moral imperialist; I am not “the white savior,” and this is not a Freedom Writers’ essay. Those notions, I believe, are paternalistic. I want to teach because I want young people to have the education they deserve. I want to teach because I have an understanding that education will inspire young people to demand change where it needs to happen and because this kind of educational foundation should be mandatory for all students. I want to teach because as Shim (2012) states “The field of education functions in such a way as to reproduce and legitimize class/racial inequalities and maintain status quo since the educational credentials are held mostly by those already in dominant positions (p. 214).”

It is my belief that for students to be successful, they need an educator sensitive to the obstacles they face. Students need more teachers that understand fully the societal barriers that are preventing youth from reaching their potential. There is a desperate need for educators who have a detailed com- prehension of these barriers and an understanding of strategies to overcome them. I believe in exploring research and practice that provide me with the skillset to guarantee the success of my students, not only scholastically, but intellectually, and professionally. I am convinced that remaining on a personal and intellectual learning curve, I will be able to enhance students’ ability to self-actualize and overcome systemic limitations through consciousness. I hope that, through my own modeling of life-long learning, I can inspire a passion for learning in other students of life and academics that will arm them for success for the rest of their lives. As my hero, and favorite author, Fanon (1968) stated in his famous canonical work, Wretched of the Earth:

To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward, it is due to them too . . . that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything . . . the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people (p. 197).

Holding a similar philosophy as Fanon, Civil Rights icon and President of the Algebra Project, Bob Moses, encourages grassroots people, students, parents, and teachers to make a demand on schools and society to deliver quality education to every mother’s child (2001). Again, like Fanon, Moses (2001) insists “that in the long run they themselves are the only protection they have against violence or injustice . . . they cannot look for salvation anywhere but to themselves” (p. 33). I will be using my summer to study, research, and work with local youth in the Algebra Project because I want to learn how to empower myself and others to raise our voices and actions, to work our “magic hands,” and to demand justice in a society that still sees “constitutional people as constitutional property!” (Moses 2010).

Story 5: Voices of those we cage —and a different kind of witness

by Chaundra L. Whitehead

If there is anywhere in the world where there is a predominance of not only control and subjugation, but also the caging of humans, it exists in prisons in the United States of America. It might shock some of our citizens of the USA that our “leader of the free world” is also the leader of incarceration. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world (Tsai & Scommegna, 2012). At the end of 2011, there were about 7 million offenders under the supervision of the adult correctional systems in the United States. This equates to about one in every 34 adult residents in the U.S. being under some form of correctional supervision, which includes incarceration, probation, and parole (Glaze & Parks, 2012). Many of the imprisoned have very little hope to be seen or heard from again, with about 50,000 serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. About 3,000 people are sentenced to death. Given the rates of mass incarceration in the United States, the voices of many, who have suffered unjustly in a court system that is stacked against them (Alexander, 2010; Stevenson, 2012), are missing each day from our workplaces, schools, and communities. These voices are to be found behind bars, unseen and unheard by society because of either frivolous or minor infractions against the laws of a legal system that far more often prosecutes the poor than it does the rich for the same or worse crimes. Too few can or do speak for the imprisoned poor.

For almost 10 years, I have been telling the stories of imprisoned people, as just that, people who are confined to prisons, not inmates, degenerates or criminals, but people. I tell their stories with a distinct inability to do it justice. Witnessing is an act of caring for your fellow human being. Being a true witness requires courage in the face of those who wish to continue to silence the stories of caged individuals. My first teaching position at a correctional facility arose from a series of fortunate occurrences. I was in a telephone customer service position I greatly disliked, when we were informed that we were going to be laid off in a couple months. I was excited and saw this as my chance to look for full-time work in adult education. I had been a volunteer tutor at the public library and worked part time at an adult reading center, but now I wanted to find a full-time job that could use the same skills. I saw an advertisement in the local newspaper for an Adult Basic Education Instructor at a nearby prison in the next county. I applied and was offered the position soon after.

I was a novice teacher to say the least. I had only taught in one-on-one set- tings, now I was going to be responsible for reading, math, and language arts for two classes a day, each three hours long with about 25 incarcerated women on a 4th- to 6th-grade performance level. This was my Adult Basic Education II (ABE II) class. Now what was I going to do with them? No one really told me what to do. There was a two-week training on correctional facility policies and procedures, such as safety, suicide prevention, and key control. That is the typical employee-training program at most correctional facilities. Then I was given a week to do lesson plans and prepare my classroom. Luckily another teacher was hired for ABE II at the same time, so we had each other to bounce ideas around and come up with a plan. We also had to share materials. There was only one class set of most of the books that we both needed, so we coordinated a schedule for the dictionaries and other important books. No matter how much planning a new teacher does, however, we are hardly ever ready. Being ready for my incarcerated students seemed like a different type of ready. Was I truly ready to be a nonjudgmental promoter of learning?

For the first few months I was overwhelmed with lesson plans, grading, attendance form submissions, classes interrupted or cancelled by institutional incidents, standardized test scores, and the general management of 25 personalities at once. Eventually I found my way, and I relied heavily on hands-on-activities with limited supplies, watching videos and having discussions or worksheets to accompany them, division of the class into small groups for activities, plays, and reading aloud. Essentially I tried to do every- thing, but lecture. If I did need to do whole group direct instruction, it was limited to 20 minutes. With such diverse learning needs and levels in one class, lecture was not the most productive means of instruction. If lecture was the least effective, quiet independent work was a close second. This was the method of choice for many other teachers at the institution, but with low literacy levels, short attention spans, and adult women who may take various medications that cause drowsiness, quiet-time work was limited. But I did find that classical or new age music could lessen the pain of “quiet-time” work.

In my class, there were also lessons on topics that were not in the books on the shelf such as a lesson on propaganda during election time. When each holiday came around, we learned its history and meaning. I offered information that I believed might broaden their understanding of what was happening in the world around them. I also served as the Literacy Coordinator, providing trainings for those incarcerated women who wanted to become tutors. I created and managed the Lunchtime Tutoring program, which was successful and well received. My position as an ABEII instructor was instrumental in developing my understanding of correctional facilities, criminal justice, and crime.

I enjoyed my work so much that I had the crazy notion of becoming a director or principal of a school in a prison. I was told by my supervising principal, who was retiring, though, that I would need a master’s degree to take on the position. Off I went to get a master’s degree. Then all of this “prison stuff” I did, took off. For the past five years, I have been a volunteer with Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), a conflict resolution training program offered to incarcerated people. Whether conduction research or being a volunteer, AVP is an organization for which I would choose to work precisely because whatever the role, the AVP program promotes dialogue, empathy, and community building. They engage the prisoner as a fellow human being.

Many people do not feel comfortable working in or visiting prison facilities. Some AVP volunteers have come once and not returned. When teaching at a prison full time, I remember the high teacher turnover rate. I always felt that some of these people who chose not to return, did so not out of fear, but because they recognized the hypocrisy and inequality which existed inside the prisons. Nothing like the society script they had been told about prison turned out to be true. The prison was simply not the humane rehabilitation facility they had expected.

Why do we believe that we should be fearful in a correctional setting? Because that is the script that has been told to us. Certainly, timidity is not a useful quality for working in a correctional setting, but when has timidity been useful anywhere? People respond to bold authenticity. Some qualities that are valued in correctional facilities, much like anywhere else in society, seemed most often to be honesty, sincerity, and humor. As an educator moving and working in that space, I became aware of the contradictions and flaws ever present. Yet I began to understand that I was accountable to the people who live in those cells, to tell their stories as a counter narrative to the dominant script. I have visited several prisons in different parts of the country, and they can be quiet or loud. In either scenario, though, no one’s real voice is heard.

Way too often I see the phrase “Lock them up and throw away the key,” in news story comments online. I wonder if the people who use this phrase have ever really stopped to think of the implications of removing someone from society for life, especially for nonviolent offenses or even worse, conspiracy charges, which often equates to no real charge, just a suspicion of involvement in something the power structure finds offensive.

How has America become number one in harsh, often inhumane, punitive treatment of fellow human beings, without the public registering outrage or demonstrating shame by this statistical abomination? Of course, after the pictures of our nation’s torture of international prisoners suspected as terrorists, why would I ask that question?

Nevertheless, as a nation we seem to choose to believe the scripts we have been told over the years about crime. We choose to believe that we are safer locking everybody up; that crime is out of control; that harsher punishments are needed. And, of course, the best story ever told is that we needed a war on drugs. But the media seems to be rampant with deception, misinformation, covering up of injustices, pandering to privilege and oppression.

Experience in a correctional facility and dialogue with an incarcerated person or someone returning home after incarceration often reveals the truth that many of them are not much different from us. The dominant language we are accustomed to hearing and speaking has been used to diminish the stories of incarcerated people and reframe them as less than human, revolting, unintelligent. For, often we hear the adage that if the imprisoned were intelligent, they would get away with “it” as many other Americans do each day—like the gang on Wall Street. I would argue that the defining factor is not intelligence but power and money. As Bryan Stevenson, lawyer, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said in a Ted Talk (2012), “We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.”

Those outcomes limit the ability of millions of people to think and create. In our nation’s prisons, individual needs, thoughts, and ideas are not valued, encouraged, or rewarded. How is this rehabilitation? When thinking skills are continually reduced, how is an incarcerated person to develop the skills they need to have a successful return to society? Contrary to society’s distortions about the humanity of people it chooses to cage like animals in a zoo, worth and value are actually abundant in the prisons where I’ve worked. Surprisingly, in the most oppressive and repressive human conditions, creativity still manages to flourish. I hear the voices of incarcerated people who find a way to write and speak from behind the walls. I see them read and reflect. I witness acts of kindness between them.

Squandering talent through the use of serving long sentences seems unproductive and a waste of human potential. I experienced this waste once when I was assigned a teacher’s aide, Heather, who was a professional woman, excellent with accounting and convicted of some fraudulent activities which gained her a 10-year sentence. At the end of the 10 years, she was expected to find a job, hope her skill set was still relevant, and earn enough money to pay restitution. She was an excellent teacher’s aide, managed my gradebook, helped students one-on-one, and kept the class tidy. Yet I always thought it was such a waste of talent that she was there grading the student papers instead of contributing to the larger society outside the prison walls. I was thankful, though, that she was able to maintain some of her professional skills. At the time, I truly felt that she could teach the class, so why was she incarcerated for 10 years, rather than a shorter sentence, and more community-based restorative justice strategies?

I learned that she was there because the more money a person steals, the longer they are expected to be banished from society. Fortunately she did her time and was released. Soon after release, she contacted me to tell me she was on this side of freedom, and within two weeks, she had a job and purchased a car. As we chatted online, I was so excited to read that she had been given an opportunity. Heather was motivated and she had a great support system. She also provided a glimmer of hope for the work I do by stating “You had an impact on me at the very beginning. I always told my family how much I enjoyed working for you because it felt like a normal working relationship. I enjoyed our lunchtime discussions. Having just come to prison is was nice to be able to have intelligent conversations.” Incidents like this continually persuade me that most people want to be acknowledged and heard, regardless of their circumstances. Why should a criminal conviction render a person unworthy of the most basic conversational exchange?

When I left working at the prison, I tried to make a quiet exit. I told my class one day before I planned to leave that I did not want them to plot a surprise party, or have time to get too sad. But that plan failed. On my last day, at the end of class, I had one student who stood there looking at me, crying and asking why I had to go. Who, she asked, was she going to talk to? And who would fill the void. As she stood there, with the heavy weight of sadness, I violated my employee protocols and gave her a hug.

The AVP program had the opportunity to hold a full day workshop inside the prison, where dozens of outside AVP people came to have training and dialogue with the inside people. I overheard one person questioning “Are they always this happy?” Soon she got up the nerve to comment to one of the inside facilitators about how happy everyone seemed and the response was “Just because this is prison doesn’t mean we go around sad every day.” Society would have us believe the people who have made mistakes do not deserve happiness, joy, accomplishment, or any of the other positive emotions representing the human condition. Some people do have hard days, great sadness, remorse, and regret, but we will never know the dimensions of their human- ness unless incarcerated people are allowed to have a voice. Stevenson insists that he believes that a murderer is not just a murderer; a thief is not just a thief. Most humans, he suggests, are multifaceted, complex beings. Certainly those were the ambiguous dimensions that I observed in the prisons. Granted there are recalcitrant, who probably might cause us to challenge this belief, but those were not the people with whom I came in contact.

Redefining the narrative of voices from prison requires redefining the script of fairness and integrity in our criminal justice system, which continues to crumble before the eyes of Americans and the world. While the evidence exists that justice for some happens, many in our country still hold on to the notion that there is a fair and equitable punitive system for all. If only those who still believe in the fairness of the criminal justice system had a chance to hear the voices I hear regularly, they might reconsider the script that has duped them into distortions of prison realities, of erroneous notions of fair- ness and legal equity. To really understand the horrors that our democracy has created inside its jails and prisons, everyone should read, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010).

In the Marvin Gaye tune “Can I get a Witness,” he inquires “Is it right to be treated so bad, When you’ve given everything you had?” Returning citizens can echo this same refrain post release as they are continuously subjected to exclusion from voting, housing, employment, and opportunities (2010). How long must punishment continue after punishment has been completed? Once again, there is a script expressing that those who have been convicted of committing a crime are not worthy of reintegration, that their penitence must last their natural life. Sharing the stories of those who are denied voice, silenced, unheard has been a validating experience for both me and my imprisoned students. The sharing has allowed the silenced to know, “I am listening, I hear you” and it lets the silencers understand that, “I know you are trying to silence them, but their stories will be told.”