Summer Learning in the Carceral Classroom

It has been 17 months since we’ve had face-to-face interaction with students at the jail. In July, we hosted our first virtual classroom at the Cook County Jail. We were in community with 10 male students at Division 10, and they engaged in a rich and nourishing dialogue. They wrestled with the story of Cain and Abel and Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Deep gratitude to Dr. Ted Hiebert and Ph.D. candidate Thehil Singh for co-teaching the mini course entitled “Community, Conflict and Restoration in the Book of Genesis” and to Blake Collins, who has done a phenomenal job coordinating the logistics and supporting the course. Please keep them and the students in prayer!

To learn more about the power of liberative theological education in carceral spaces, check out a recent interview with program director Jia Johnson in this article “Today’s Underground Railroad: From jail to freedom with education”  published in the Christian Science Monitor.