TOPICS: DEMOCRACY LAB: PRISON EDUCATION in Spring 2024 (LW3091C)

Telling stories, crossing borders: mutual learning in prison education

This innovative class brings AUP students into a shared educational and creative space with people detained at La Santé prison in Paris.

After one introductory class at AUP and a prison-organized training session, ten AUP students will spend the semester sharing readings, discussions, and creative activities with an equal number of detainees.

In each class session, students and detainees will read together as a group, then in small mixed groups go on to develop creative ways to exchange ideas and reactions. Circle pedagogy, deep listening and other egalitarian approaches are used to make the learning experience mutual. In the last three or four sessions of the class, students and detainees will put together a collaborative final project, which will be presented in a celebratory event, attended by invited guests from AUP and from the prison.

This class emerges from a collaboration between AUP and the cultural activities department of the Centre Pénitentiaire Paris La Santé, a newly-renovated remand prison in the 14th district of Paris. Detained participants, who primarily speak French (but also other languages), will learn alongside AUP participants, who primarily speak English (but also other languages). Classes will occur primarily in French, and AUP students are required to have an intermediate conversational French level to participate (B2 or higher).

Interested students are asked to fill out the attached application and return it to the professor by Nov 1st, 2023. Pre-selected applicants will be contacted for an interview. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfykODPJr6tAfyOJfqzcoCtkJznJ9aP...