All About Mentoring Spring 2011 - SUNY Empire State College

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intrinsic effort to self-protect. One comment
was, “I don’t know if I was scared or if I
just felt if I was doing something toward
being a better person that this would go by
quicker or faster, or make it alright. But I
just knew I needed to get in on that … ”
Another said, “I was nervous,” and yet
another commented that “I was actually
fearful of college at first until I got in
there to see it wasn’t that bad.” As each
interview progressed, the dialogue about the
learning process, as a whole, intensified. In
Schuante’s words:
I couldn’t wait, I had to stay at [the
maximum-security unit] for a year … if it
wasn’t for me coming in here and getting
this now, then I would get out and go
right back and do the same thing [that
got me here before]. I needed to take a
look at myself, because apparently I was
not doing things right, and as long as I
continued on this same path, it was going
to take me to the same place – prison or
death, or maybe both.
At this juncture in their stories, none of
the women articulated an understanding
of the significance of their decisions to
be in college beyond the desire to avoid
temptation in order to change their
direction in life. Patterns emerged from the
interviews illustrating their processes for
reorienting their earlier learning experiences
and self-protecting to strengthen their
success. School provided a buffer against
the troublemakers, and it helped to create
a subset of like-minded women who could
support one another in positive ways.
By avoiding controversy, and caring and
supporting others, they contributed to their
own “holding environments,” defined by
Kegan (1982) as a supporting or “amniotic”
internal environment (p. 140) where one is
safe to evolve and to let go.
Gaining Voice From Learning
These women found an internal place of
safety for learning where they began the
process of growing and changing. They
began to trust and listen to their inner
voices, rather than those of their peers.
They prioritized their time in such a
way as to allow for study and reflection.
As a continuum of change, and in the
surroundings of a learning environment that
they found to be nurturing and supportive,
the women cocooned themselves as
protection from their worlds of the past.
Although the types of learning experiences
varied from traditional or hybrid learning
models to distance learning classes, the
participants spoke of the influence of caring
educators in their learning process. In their
discussions of those who were significant
in their lives, every participant expounded
on one or more educators who inspired
them, confirming the notion that caring is
integral to pedagogy. The women offered
feedback about many educators and some
noneducators who were a positive influence,
as well as some who were not.
They recalled learning methodologies that
engaged them in the classroom, interactive
lab and other hands-on experiences. They
talked of skill-building and resultant
learning challenges as value-added.
Regardless of the methodological approach,
the participants emphasized their accounts
of knowledge-making within a community
of either a few or many that fostered trust
and collaboration. One instructor was noted
in particular for his positive influence:
He showed us that we have choices and
that the choices that we make impact
others … but, that we could, as women,
become whatever we want to.
He was just an awesome man, he cares
about us and he just looks at you, he
never looked at us as prisoners/inmates.
He looked at us as people, who we were.
I can’t thank him enough for that. Even
to this day, I talk about him all the time;
my teacher was the best. He had a good
influence on everybody.
Those who were in self-directed study
referenced the feelings of trust gained
through unwavering volunteer support and
teachers who expressed a genuine interest in
their learning through frequent and steady
written responsiveness.
Louise talked about her experience with an
educator who volunteered her time at the
prison facility:
She was always positive, no matter what.
If she said she was going to do it she did
it … always. And that is an extremely
important thing because you are used
to people saying they were going to do
something and they didn’t do it. She
did it, and you can guarantee when that
class was getting ready to start you had
your books. And you had pencils, paper,
graphing calculators, things that you
needed to do your classes you had …
That was probably the biggest impact
because in the beginning if she hadn’t
done what she said, I wouldn’t have had
trust in that, but she always did what she
said she was going to do … I mean, [she]
is an absolutely phenomenal person …
she makes you believe in yourself when
you don’t think that you can. When you
don’t believe in yourself one bit, she’s
there to tell you: ‘You can do this, you
can do this.’
They also talked of the collaboration
among their peers evidenced in study group
sessions, or the confidence gained by helping
other students with homework. Those
in classroom and lab settings described
collaboration as the teamwork of classmates,
or the shared learning experiences of
teachers who taught while demonstrating
their openness to learning. This fostered
trust in those who might have otherwise
just been authority figures. This entire new
learning environment helped the women
to develop a new level of consciousness
through their learning experience (Taylor
and Marienau, 1995).
In the ongoing recollection of their learning
events, the women continued to reflect
on their attainment of knowledge, and all
that they were deriving from it. As they
expanded on those experiences during
the interviews, they gained strength of
expression, articulated in words and with
tone and inflection. They shared purpose
in thought and action and spoke of “whole
new worlds” with new-found confidence
in their abilities. They voiced feelings of
empowerment while remaining philosophical
about their journeys in academe. Taylor,
Marienau, and Fiddler (2000) discussed the
process of continuous learning as one that
approaches “new situations willing to pose
and pursue questions out of wonderment”
(p. 39). The women in this study, as they
gained voice, were not afraid to focus on
learning; in fact, they thrived on it. They
carried their feelings and their resolve with
them following imprisonment.
suny empire state college • all about mentoring • issue 39 • spring 2011