Scholarship@WashULaw

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

Publication Title

Washington University Law Review Online

Abstract

One way that I have tried to stay fresh as a teacher through the decades is to periodically force myself outside of my teaching comfort zone by trying something completely different. Sometimes these initiatives will end up being a one-time experiment. That was the case a little over ten years ago when I decided to teach a new course (Contracts) in a new format (online, but well before Zoom had become commonplace). Other times, my teaching experiment will prove to be more than just a frolic and detour, as was true eight years ago when I began offering a free ACT prep course to students at urban high schools in St. Louis and Chicago. That foray into teaching high school students has endured each semester.

When I recently turned sixty, I felt like I was ready for another outside-the-box teaching experience. That was part of my motivation to volunteer as a co-teacher of a three-credit “Introduction to Law and Society” course at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center (MECC) in Pacific, Missouri, as part of Washington University’s Prison Education Project (PEP). The PEP at Washington University (“WashU”) began in 2014 and allows students who are inmates at MECC to receive a two-year Associate in Arts Degree or a four-year Bachelor of Science in Integrated Studies Degree. Kevin Windhauser, Director of WashU’s PEP, told me that there are currently forty students in the program at MECC and another eighteen students at the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Missouri.

Keywords

Teaching, Prisons, Legal Education in Prisons

Publication Citation

Daniel Keating, Lessons Learned in Prison, 100 Wash. U. L. Rev. 73 (2023)

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