Educating kids who are incarcerated can sometimes require teachers to think outside of the box and employ different methods to stir up students' interest in learning.  In Virginia, educators are doing just that; they have developed a new program to help juvenile and adult offenders learn through listening.

LifeEars is a pilot program designed to help incarcerated children and adults develop their literacy skills by listening to books read aloud by an instructor or played on CD or tape. 

"[This program] drives literacy skills and it opens up areas that inmates [and] juveniles never thought about," said Gary Anderson, a school psychologist with the Virginia Department of Correctional Education (DCE) and the creator of the LifeEars program. 

According to Anderson, the LifeEars program is based on the concept that reading is a receptive language skill and, in order to improve his literacy, an individual needs to expand the language he is able to recognize and understand.

"What happens is when you focus on building receptive language--and that is the very heart of this program--your reading scores come up," said Anderson, who worked with public school children before transferring to the DCE.  "I found it to be very effective with children who had difficulty in reading to read to them to build their receptive language skills.  Then they become automatic readers.  They recognize words automatically."

Building a Better Knowledge of Words

To help program participants begin to recognize words within the books, LifeEars instructors will first go through the books and single out any words that may be problematic for the children or adults.  They then give them pre and post-tests on those vocabulary words see if listening to the books has improved their recognition and understanding of the words.

Beyond vocabulary tests, the instructors also lead group discussions among inmates after a book reading session has been completed so the inmates can talk about the main points of the story and what it means to them.

"[When] you have that group discussion afterwards, that's when you're really clarifying points about what you missed and what you didn't understand so that the next listening session [everybody] is on the same page literally and figuratively," Anderson said.  "They understand their ideas by talking about them out loud-[that way] you understand more of what you actually think internally." 

Each session lasts about approximately 30 minutes, with time designated after for these group discussions, which also touch upon students' feelings about the material they read and how they relate to the book's plot or characters.   According to Anderson, it is important that the offenders are interested in the books they read so they pay attention during the listening sessions and engage in the discussions afterwards.

"We want them to enjoy the books," Anderson said.  "The more you understand, the more curious you are to fill in the gaps," he said, noting that inmates who are interested in the books are eager for the next listening session to find out what happens next.  "[The program] works well with anybody because people are curious about how the stories end."

Jumpstarting Juvenile Literacy

Anderson pointed out that both juveniles and adults can benefit from a literacy program like this, although it is being piloted mainly in adult correctional facilities in Virginia.  In the past, however, it has been successful with juvenile offenders in a GED program who read The Green Mile together as a group.

"We read all 462 pages and they were asking for it," said James Dockum, a teacher at the Joseph T. Mastin High School, a juvenile correctional facility in Bon Air, Va.  "If they listened to me read the book, then we would watch the movie," he said, noting that juveniles tend to be motivated by incentives, like watching movies.

At the time when Dockum tried the LifeEars program with his high school-aged students, the movie had just come out and they were already very interested in it. 

"They had these ready-made mental images, plus it was also stuff they could relate to," Dockum said about the book that focuses on an incarcerated male on death row.

But Dockum said that beyond The Green Mile he has had a difficult time finding interesting books to read aloud to his students that also fulfill the educational requirements set forth by the DCE.  And because he now teaches offenders in middle school rather than high school, they lack a certain level of understanding and maturity.

Holding Adults' Attention

Still, he plans to try to integrate the LifeEars program into some of his classes in the fall.  Meanwhile, however, the program is running smoothly, with inmates at adult institutions who have been reading novels by authors like Steven King and Tim O'Brien.

According to Anderson, these kinds of novels, by popular authors, hold inmates' attention, get their imaginations going and help them to improve their literacy skills.

"When you listen, you have to use your imagination," Anderson said.  "When you hear something and you try to picture it in your mind, it creates all kinds of brain activity."

That brain activity means that your mind is working hard, which helps you to remember details, Anderson said.  He added that helping offenders remember the meanings and pronunciations of words is a major goal of the program.

Creating Better Readers

But, there are other benefits of the program, too.

In addition to reading skills, word recognition and speaking skills, the inmates are building up their knowledge of book and book syntax and developing list of authors that they enjoy, Anderson said.  This can be a unique experience for people who are typically non-readers, he said.

"This [program] is taking things slow and it's initially hard for a number of the inmates and the juveniles to slow down [because they are] used to [the fast pace of] TV or video," Anderson said.  "You have to slow down and really think about the plot and what's happening in the book and the character development."

Getting inmates to really think about the books they are hearing and the meaning behind the words is key to their development of literacy skills and, therefore, their preparation for re-entry, Anderson said.

"[After listening to many different books in the LifeEars program,] imagine all the different areas inmates would have thought about and engaged in active discussion [about] that they never would have thought of in a standard [literacy] program," Anderson said.  "I can't think of a better program to help inmates integrate back into their communities."

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To learn more about the LifeEars program, contact Anderson at (804) 371-2513