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I am a woman who works partime as a substitute teacher in Texas at a state penitentiary, 3,000 men, maximum security, and yes it has a death row. It is probably one of the hardest jobs I have ever had.... The first time I arrived for orientation I was so overwhelmed, I could hardly breathe. Besides the rows of barbed wire and locked gates you have to go thru to get to the classroom, the chain gangs outside working along the hi-way, the armed guards on horseback, dogs checking your car in the parking lot and me having to take off shoes, jewelry, and pat downs, etc. just to get inside the place, is enough to intimidate and scare you, the worst was the inmates and their bored, vacant, jaded eyes....I knew then when I walked into the classroom, I would do whatever it took to reach these men. Tijjeras_Slim was right when he said “You are correct, I have worked in corrections and even a relatively brief stay in solitary can have a very detrimental effect. One reason I believe, is that your usual criminal is ill equipped for introspection or penitence. Placed in solitary he is completely without the inner resources to both deal with it or benefit from it.” These men are not only educationally deficient (I had to teach some of the men to add and subtract with their fingers)
But there was something more I sensed, something lacking in those classrooms and they needed to hear it. I began to talk to them about the Divine. About the Divine in all of us, about thoughts and feelings and emotions and where they come from and how they get us in trouble, how the brain and the sub conscious works, I even talked to them about quantum physics, and of course the 67% recidivism rate they were facing when they got out. (Not all the men were getting out. I had lifers in the classroom, murders, burglars, armed robbers, drug peddlers, etc.) Did it get their attention? Yes, for several reasons, first, the talk of the Divine changed the atmosphere of the classroom, where there had been a vacuum before and you could feel His presence moving among the room. The room began to feel like love... Secondly, these were adult men who needed to be intellectually challenged and I don't care how little their formal education was, they listened, observed and participated in lectures, info and my demonstrations that ranged from schrodinger’s cat-box and Zeno’s paradoxes, to capitalism vs. socialism, western civilization, Jewish history, sonoran dessert and the life of cactus, hormone replacement therapy, politics, hippie movement, you name it we discussed it. The point is - knowledge and education has always been the key, but there is one thing more important, and that is simply - Love. How to define love and actually how to love. I also explained to them it was the most humane action they could do for their victims, the families, and the world. (did they like talking about their victims, no it made them very uneasy, we all have a conscious and they knew their actions upon their victims were wrong.) I turned the tables and discussed with them when I had been a victim of an attempted rape and showed them the knife scare on my hand as I fought the knife away from my throat from my assailant. Here, they were able to get a victim's point of view more objectively without being emotionally involved in the crime and the victim. They thanked me afterwards. What have I learned working at this state pen here in Texas? That it doesn't work when you come from the point of view of who gets your love and who doesn't. You can't pick and choose. The Divine calls us to love everyone and everything. Is it hard to do, yes, you need God's help. Driving up to the prison, sometimes in the dark, and yes it is always scary as some classes start around 5am, I ask God to remove from me any obstacles that keeps me from loving every human being that I encounter that day. Then with Love in place before I start, the learning begins and the changes occur.