Right Place, Write Time

Release date: December 08, 2006 |

by Ann E. Kolakowski
With Katy Bryant’08 and Simon Greenberg-Block ’08

Last spring, like hundreds of their counterparts, 13 Goucher College students experienced a different world. Unlike their peers, however, they didn’t travel overseas: They rode the Goucher bus each Tuesday afternoon to Christopher Place Employment Academy in East Baltimore. There, as participants in English 206, Professional Communication, they spent the semester honing their writing skills on real-world applications such as essays, proposals, reports, and resumés. In the process, they also gained insight into the real-world struggles of men working to change lives once defined by homelessness, drug addiction, and/or crime.

Professional Communication was one of a baker’s dozen of service-learning courses offered in Spring 2006. The idea for the course, says its instructor, Assistant Professor of English Barbara Roswell, grew from her longstanding interest in the role that institutions of higher learning can play in partnering with the criminal justice system.

In the summer of 2005, Roswell participated in a weeklong workshop led by Temple University Professor Lori Pompa on implementing “inside/outside” courses, ones that link inmates with college students. “We visited several prisons, talked with inmates and students who had participated in [programs of this type], and had the chance to teach a short lesson in a classroom made up of faculty and a group of men serving life sentences in Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania,” she says. “I came to see the power of creating a ‘crucible’ wherein powerful learning can occur.”

That fall, with the assistance of Rob Koulish, France-Merrick Professor of Service Learning, Roswell approached the Maryland Department of Parole and Probation. Based on her vision and specific goals for the course, officials suggested she work with Christopher Place Employment Academy, a service of Catholic Charities.

Described by program manager Trevor Britt as “Baltimore’s first and only one-stop, homeless, addiction, and employment training center,” Christopher Place administers a highly structured, 18-month program combining education, job training, and counseling with the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing. Founded in 1996, the center has successfully placed 95 percent of its 600 graduates. In FY03 (the latest year for which figures are available), Christopher Place provided assistance to 68 men at a per capita cost of $11,400-less than half of what is spent to incarcerate each inmate at the Baltimore City Correctional Center, located a few hundred yards away. “We’re a bright spot in the midst of all that despair,” says Britt, who held positions as a community organizer and police officer before joining the staff in 2005.

Complementary goals

Roswell’s goals for the course were ambitious. “I hoped the Goucher students would gain insight into the criminal justice system and into a range of issues affecting Baltimore City, including poverty, lack of stable housing, race, and addiction,” she says, “and that by establishing meaningful connections with people very different from themselves the students might challenge stereotypes and question assumptions based on them.” On a practical level, Roswell wanted her students to develop an ability to analyze and creatively respond to an audience, work productively within a diverse group, and learn to take interpersonal and intellectual risks.

“I also hoped,” she admits, “that each student might develop a sense of the difference he or she can make-as well as a sense of hope about pursuing social justice.”

Although the planned outcomes for the Christopher Place students were different, she believed they could be just as beneficial. “I wanted the men to gain an appreciation for their own wisdom, as well as practical experience, a capacity to learn and contribute to the learning of others, confidence to pursue higher education, and preparation for professional work.”

It is common practice in professional writing courses to have students develop skills by researching and producing documents for real-world audiences. Thus, a practical goal of the course was for both groups to use their newly developed communication skills to produce feature stories, brochures, Web pages, and other tangible marketing pieces to benefit Christopher Place.

First-day surprise

Like the rest of her classmates, Emily Martin ’08 learned of the course’s service-learning focus during the first class meeting. “I very anxious,” she acknowledges. “It wasn’t the course I signed up for.” For most of the Goucher participants, the weekly trips to the city constituted their first visits to Baltimore City and their first meaningful interaction with men who had been homeless or in prison. And, for many of the white students, the course represented their first experience as a minority group member.

“One of the first things I noticed was how professional all of the Christopher Place students looked,” recalls Katy Bryant ‘08. “Nothing indicated that these men had very recently been homeless. They were wearing dress shirts, nice slacks, and neckties.”

At the first on-site meeting, the students were placed in two concentric circles, with Christopher Place men on the outer ring facing Goucher students on the inside. In speed-dating style, students from each group formed pairs, shared something about themselves with the person sitting opposite, and moved on when time was called a few minutes later. What many Goucher students learned about their counterparts that day was that the men had recently started Blackout, a 30-day phase during which they could not leave the building, use the telephone, or send or receive mail-a foreign concept, no doubt, to young adults who are constantly connected to iPods, cell phones, and computer screens.

After a few weeks, the men of Christopher Place gave their classmates a tour of the facility, including their sleeping quarters and the locker room where they used an old barber chair to cut each other’s hair. The experience caused more than one undergraduate to rethink the concept of cramped living. “With an average of 30 men sleeping in the main room at Christopher Place,” Bryant says, “having only one or two roommates suddenly seemed like a luxury.”

A natural assimilation

Comfort levels and writing skills improved as the semester progressed. The students were challenged, for example, to design and execute the best paper airplane possible-then to document the process with step-by-step instructions, complete with mini-diagrams, for others to follow. Later in the course, they were tasked with writing a “definition paper,” describing, in the simplest terms possible, a topic on which they had expert knowledge. “The vast differences in the backgrounds between students in the class only served to improve our writing,” reflects Bryant, an economics major. “As we shared drafts with each other, we began to realize that others may know even less about our topics than we ever thought possible. By the time we finished with the definition paper, I had read essays on everything from skiing to traditional Irish music to what it is like to live with alcoholism. And, with every essay I read, I learned more about the other students in my class.”

“I think it helped that we demonstrated week after week that ‘play’ can be valuable” says Roswell, “and there are ways to integrate the imagination with more analytical skills.”

As the men moved into the second phase of the Christopher Place program, Employment and Financial Stability, they turned to their classmates for help in writing resumés and cover letters. The documents helped many find jobs that would allow them to start saving toward the $1,500 minimum required to advance into the third component of the program, Housing Stability.

By the semester’s end, the division between Christopher Place students and Goucher students was nearly nonexistent. “It was a natural assimilation,” Britt comments. “It was a good experience to see them grow and become a cohort.”

“We were all able to teach each other something each time we met,” says Martin. “The Christopher Place students have had experiences that caused Goucher students to step back and appreciate the struggles the men have overcome.”

Benefits beyond the page

“Although many of my goals were not fully achieved, I think students left the course with more curiosity, more empathy, more respect, more humility, and more hope than they entered with,” observes Roswell, who plans to make few changes to the course when she offers it again next spring. “I think the course also largely fulfilled my hopes for the Christopher Place students, who universally expressed increased confidence and interest in pursuing further education, and who used writing in creative ways to reflect on their journey at the academy as well.

“In some ways, however, the course exceeded my goals. Trevor often talked about the ways that having Goucher students participate in classes energized many of the residents and staff of Christopher Place-not just the students taking the course.”

Practically speaking, every student left the class more aware of audience and purpose, better able to condense and edit, better able to establish authority as a writer in a professional environment, familiar with key forms and genres-and with a strong resumé and cover letter in hand.

“We are doing not only life-changing, but life-saving work,” notes Britt. “To have the Goucher students come in and … get the word out was a big plus for us.”

“I am glad I decided to give this course a chance, and that I had the opportunity to work downtown with the Christopher Place students,” says Bryant. “Despite living in the Baltimore area my entire life, I really knew nothing about homelessness, addiction, or the prison system-and had never heard of Christopher Place. Now, I have a deeper understanding of how people become homeless and what it takes for those who become homeless to turn their lives around.”

Goucher students were not the only ones who found the experience worthwhile. “I can now see myself in college and getting a degree,” says Christopher Place student Damond Ramsey. “I see that I can do it.”