31 Teaching in America’s Prisons Taught Me to Believe in Second Chances
31 Teaching in America’s Prisons Taught Me to Believe in Second Chances
Learning Outcomes
- Apply the reading process to “Teaching in America’s Prisons Taught Me to Believe in Second Chances.”
- Summarize the article.
- Respond to the article.
- Research an individual used as an example in Cantora’s article.
Preview the Article
Follow the steps below to preview the article “Teaching in America’s Prisons Taught Me to Believe in Second Chances.” Ideally, you should print the article and write your responses in the margins of the printed copy. To read more about previewing, visit the chapter on previewing a reading.
- Read the title. What does it make you think about? What do you think the article is about? What questions do you have? Record your predictions and questions on the printed copy of the article next to the title.
- Read the author’s bio and watch a video interview with Cantora.
- Read the first two or three paragraphs. What additional predictions do you now have about the article? What additional questions do you have? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the article and notice the headings (e.g. Education changes self-image) within the article. What additional thoughts or questions do these raise? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the bolded and underlined vocabulary in the article. If there are any words that you do not know well, look them up in a print or online dictionary and write some notes about their meanings on the printed copy of the article. Keep in mind that some words have multiple meanings. You may need to read the sentence containing the word to understand the word’s usage. Additionally, there may also be proper nouns, such as Pell Grant, and acronyms or abbreviations, such as GED, that are unfamiliar to you but that you need to know to understand the article. These terms usually are not in the dictionary, so you will need to conduct a Google search to find out their meanings.
- Based on your preview of the article and the vocabulary, what do you think is the central point of the article? (Don’t worry if you are not sure. This is a prediction or guess – you do not have to be correct as long as you are engaging your brain.) Record your prediction on the printed copy of the article.
- Based on your preview, do you predict that the article is narrative, expository, or argumentative?
Read Interactively
Now, read the article using the guidelines from the chapter on reading interactively. As you read, follow these steps to engage with the text.
- Pause to confirm or revise your predictions and to answer the questions you posed while previewing the article. Write down those revised predictions and responses to the questions as you read. If you cannot find the answers to your questions, save them for further research and discussion.
- Pause at other points to check for understanding of what you just read. Can you explain key ideas in your own words yet? If not, reread to clarify. Ideas that