By Collin Binkley
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Sleep didn’t come easily for Brittany Thompson on Tuesday. She knew that when morning came, she would have to face a classroom full of young felons, and the first day can be the worst.
“They like to test you on the first day,” Thompson said. “They like to see what they can get away with.”
During the school year, Thompson teaches second-graders in Whitehall. While most of her colleagues are on vacation, however, she’s one of six teachers who hold summer-school classes at the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center.
The nearly 100 inmates at the maximum-security facility are back in the classroom now after a two-week reprieve between the school-year term, which is run by Columbus City Schools, and summer school, taught by teachers that the county hires.
Because of security concerns and a $15,000 budget that covers only teacher salaries, the students learn basic skills in classrooms similar to ones they might learn about in their history lessons.
“It’s kind of like reverting to the days of the one-room schoolhouse,” said Ed Kise, a shift manager at the detention center.
But Thompson’s students aren’t stuck in the past. In math class, they’re busy imagining their future car — and calculating its cost.
“They have to come up with the total price to make their car, the price they’re going to sell their car for and the profit they’re going to make,” said Thompson, who’s in her third year teaching at the detention center.
Even though some of the lessons are lighthearted, teachers know that many of their students are accused of serious crimes.
“But by the same token, they’re still kids,” said Charles Wyatt, a substitute teacher for Columbus schools who just began his fifth summer with the program.
With detention officers in every classroom and constant camera surveillance, Wyatt said it’s easier to teach at the center than at some city schools. Plus, he said, the inmates provide a willing audience.
“The kids are locked up, and they want something to do other than stare at four walls,” he said.
An average stay at the detention center is two weeks, said Herb Henderson, the facility’s superintendent. That means teachers never know who’s going to show up for class.
“My first year was really difficult because I didn’t realize how transient they were going to be,” Thompson said. Her solution was giving more individual attention to her students so she doesn’t have to start at Day One for the whole class every time a new inmate arrives.
The purpose of the program is to get students performing at their grade level, but some research suggests it’s also likely to keep them from getting locked up in the future.
A 2007 report by the Correctional Education Association states that going to school behind bars reduces the likelihood of being incarcerated again by 29 percent, arguing that education is the best crime deterrent.
Wyatt said he could back that up from his experience. “I have seen some of these kids on the outside. They remember me, and they have good things to say,” he said.
With years of experience teaching troubled youths, Wyatt said he’s never been intimidated by teaching criminals. And now that the first day is over, Thompson isn’t either.
“I think I really gained their trust and I think they found out quickly that I’m really gonna care.”
Copyright 2010 The Columbus Dispatch