By Evan Flaxman, JD, MBA
For approximately three years, I ran a GED program in a federal prison setting.
During that time, more than 350 students earned their GEDs, and I taught approximately 95 percent of the time in Spanish.
The students came from vastly different educational backgrounds. Some had been in the GED program for years before I arrived. Some wanted desperately to learn. Others were dismissive, disruptive, or convinced that they simply weren’t capable of succeeding academically.
One student refused to learn math.
For six months, he was emphatic about it.
“I’m not going to learn math. There’s no way I’m going to learn math. I’m just not doing it.”
So I didn’t force him.
I let him sit there.
Then one day, after about six months, I asked him a simple question.
“Would you give me one chance to see if you know more math than you think you do?”
He agreed.
I told him, “I guarantee you know fractions.”
He told me he didn’t know anything about fractions.
I told him I knew that he did.
He wanted to know how I could possibly know that.
I had learned enough about his background to know that there was a real-world example he would immediately understand. Because of the nature of that example, I first asked the correctional officer supervising the classroom for permission to use it.
Then I turned back to the student.
“If somebody came to you and wanted a quarter of a pound, how many ounces would you give them?”
“Four.”
“How did you figure that out?”
“There are sixteen ounces in a pound.”
“You just did division.”
Then I asked him how much he would charge.
“Two thousand.”
“How did you get that?”
“I charged five hundred a quarter.”
“So that’s multiplication.”
In a matter of minutes, I hadn’t taught him division, multiplication, or fractions.
I had shown him that he already knew them.
Before I Could Teach Them, I Had to Know What They Knew
When I took over the program, I inherited students at radically different academic levels. Some had already spent years in the GED program. Others had different educational backgrounds, different strengths, different weaknesses, and very different levels of motivation.
The first thing I did was give everyone a practice GED exam.
But the exam itself was only the beginning.
I sat down with the students and went over their results with them. I wanted to understand not only what they knew and didn’t know, but something equally important: Were they interested in learning? Were they willing to admit that they didn’t understand something?
And could I help them do that without making them feel inadequate?
I never believed that showing someone everything he didn’t know was the same thing as teaching him.
Once I saw a student’s weaknesses and we had discussed the exam, I started at the first step.
Not the first step in a textbook.
Not the first step in a standardized curriculum.
The first step for that particular student.
Time in a Classroom Is Not the Same as Progress
Some of my students had started their sentences years before I arrived and had already spent years in the GED program.
That made it difficult to get up to speed with everyone. I couldn’t simply assume that because a student had been in a classroom for years, he had mastered the material supposedly covered during that time.
So I went back to what I could actually see.
I looked at the practice exam. I talked to the student. I identified his weaknesses. Then I started from the first missing step.
For many students, mathematics was one of the greatest barriers.
But the student who refused to learn math taught me something particularly important. His problem wasn’t simply that he didn’t know mathematics. Part of the problem was that he had already decided that mathematics was something he was incapable of learning.
Yet he understood fractions. He understood division. He understood multiplication.
He just didn’t call them that.
Sometimes the first job of a teacher isn’t to give a student new knowledge.
Sometimes it is to show him the knowledge he already has.
This Was Not an Ordinary Classroom
I don’t want to romanticize the environment.
It was difficult.
Some students were abusive or dismissive. There were fights. Some would attend class but deliberately disrupt the learning environment and make themselves a jackass.
Violence was not an abstract possibility. At the higher-security institution above the camp where I taught, a teacher was stabbed with a pencil in the middle of class.
Creating a genuine educational environment under those circumstances was hard.
But I did my best.
And it worked.
I believe a large part of the reason it worked was that the students knew my interest in them was genuine.
I wanted them to learn, but it was more than that. I wanted them to become better versions of themselves.
I wasn’t pretending to care about them as a teaching technique.
I was sincere.
And they knew it.
More Than 350 Graduates
I was able to attend all of the GED graduation ceremonies.
I watched the men put on caps and gowns. I watched the warden hand them their diplomas. I watched them have their pictures taken while holding something that, for many of them, had once seemed impossible to earn.
For many, it was one of the proudest moments they had experienced while in prison.
I knew what it had taken to get some of them there.
I knew about the students who had struggled for years. I knew about the resistance, the disruptions, and the fights. I knew about the student who sat for six months insisting that he would never learn math.
And then I watched them graduate.
More than 350 of them over approximately three years.
Teaching Is One of the Purest Ways of Giving Back
I know that my time on this earth is limited, and I believe I am here to help people in whatever ways I can.
Of all the ways we can give something to another person, teaching may be one of the purest.
Knowledge isn’t diminished when you share it. You can give someone something that changes what he believes he is capable of doing, and you lose nothing by giving it away.
For me, teaching has never been only about passing an exam.
It is about helping someone become a better version of himself.
Sometimes that begins with a practice test and an honest conversation about what someone doesn’t know.
Sometimes it means finding the first missing step and beginning there, regardless of how many years a student has already spent in a classroom.
And sometimes it means waiting six months for someone who has completely given up on learning math to finally give you one chance.
I couldn’t solve every problem. I couldn’t reach every student. And I couldn’t always create the kind of educational environment I wanted.
But I could try.
And when I watched those men put on caps and gowns, receive their diplomas from the warden, and pose for photographs, I knew that the effort had meant something.
If I was able to help somebody, then my time had meaning.
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