How a library inside juvenile hall aims to break the prison pipeline

Transcript:

Anne:

Welcome to Education Beat. I’m Anne Vasquez, CEO of EdSource. Not knowing how to read well can make it more likely for students to drop out of high school. And even to end up in jail. By some counts, 85% of youth in the juvenile justice system have trouble reading. This week, we visit a county library that is trying to help boost literacy and a love for books in teenagers who are incarcerated in juvenile hall.

Lisa:

We want kids to be comfortable enough to say I can’t read, or I need some help.

Anne:

How can a library change the life of a child who is incarcerated? Here is this week’s Education Beat with host Zaidee Stavely.

Zaidee:

Lisa Harris started working for Alameda County library more than 30 years ago. First she coordinated a literacy program for adults in jail. It turned out she knew some of the inmates from the neighborhood where she grew up in east Oakland and where her mother had been a teacher at the neighborhood school.

Lisa:

These are people I went to school with and sometimes not people I went to school with who- it happened then it still happens- slide through an educational system that doesn’t give any recognition to the fact that they can’t read. It is always kind of shocking to be on the other side, right, of the fence at a jail from people that you know. But in many cases I wasn’t necessarily surprised people slipped through the cracks.

Zaidee:

To Lisa, it was clear that these adults had been failed by the educational system. Today Lisa manages Alameda county library services for adults in county jail. And for kids 12 to 18 years old, both in the juvenile justice center and in a minimum security camp. And she still sees the same problems, just earlier.

Lisa:

Adults who can’t read started out as kids who can’t read. Right? So we typically see kids here anywhere from ages 12 and up who have completely missed the boat. Some are having sort of big decoding gaps or comprehension gaps, and some start right from the beginning. And just do not know the sounds of letters. Do not know the way letters form to make words. It’s galling and it’s shocking, but it still does occur.

Zaidee:

This is Education Beat, getting to the heart of California schools. I’m Zaidee Stavely. This week, helping kids learn to read in juvenile hall. There’s evidence that not being able to read makes it more likely that you’ll end up incarcerated. 70% of all incarcerated adults read at lower than a fourth grade level. There’s even some evidence that if you receive literacy help while you’re in prison, you’re less likely to return. According to one measure among teenagers who’ve had to go to juvenile court, 85% have problems reading.

Betty:

You know, sometimes students have stopped going to school altogether by the time that they are arrested and are placed in a juvenile hall.

Zaidee:

My colleague Betty Marquez Rosales has been covering literacy and youth in the juvenile justice system for EdSource.

Betty:

Many have had traumatic home lives that flowed into their academic lives. Some might have learning disabilities that either have been unadressed or have gone unnoticed. And so there are multitude of reasons, but that link does exist. And really the alarming fact remains that literacy rates are quite low for youth. So the average student in Alameda County in their juvenile hall is between the ages of 16, 17 years old on average, but they’re reading skills tend to be around the sixth or seventh grade level. And this is according to the chief of schools for the county’s office of education. And the dropoff really happens around the same time that some of these students stop going to school regularly. And so that link directly often matches up. And one of the literacy specialists who works for the county library, he also found that many of his students that he does one on one work with, they might be in the 10th through 12th grade level in terms of oral reading, but anywhere from upper elementary to middle school with reading comprehension.

Zaidee:

So when you say oral reading, you mean that they can read aloud at a 10th or 11th grade level, but that they’re not actually understanding what they’re reading.

Betty:

Exactly.

Zaidee:

The library program inside the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center started in the early 2000s. At first, it was volunteers coming into work with kids to improve their reading and writing skills. Gradually it grew. The probation department gave funding for a full library and the Alameda county office of education gave funding for literacy instruction. Betty, you went to visit the library. What was it like?

Betty:

When I first walked in, the juvenile hall is on the second floor of the building. So one of the library staff was in the front to meet me so I could, you know, be walked inside essentially. And we had to walk through four different doors. All of these four doors were locked. You had to receive access to be able to walk through and you sign in every single time that you go in and out, you have to sign in and out. And so after that process, we walk through this very long hall, this beige hall, overhead artificial lighting, of course, and the entire hall sort of looked the same. Just a bit endless at times it seemed. And then we finally reach a door that says Alameda County Library on it.

Betty:

I walk inside with the library staff who was guiding me inside and it just was so different from the hallway. It was colorful and it’s superhero themed too. And that was intentional as well to really try to get those positive affirmations into these students’ lives for the perhaps hour at most that they might be in this setting. It was, you know, these two long tables in the middle where you could tell they were there so that students can really come together whether it was to play perhaps chess or perhaps to read. There was a projector at the front that sometimes they watch movies based on the books that they’ve been reading. And then you there’s just three walls full of books. And there was a great variety of books.

Lisa:

So we have something here for everyone.

Zaidee:

This is library manager, Lisa Harris again

Lisa:

We have college level books, and we have very beginning juvenile books, and we get kids who want all of that and everything in between.

Zaidee:

Lisa says that increasingly she’s seen kids in the program who had stopped going to school before being incarcerated.

Lisa:

So school is kind of something they may remember from when they were 10 or 11, 12, but then they stopped going. So we get a lot of kids like that who come in, who may be 16 or 17 years old with hair on their face and a very deep voice who wanna know where the Wimpy Kid books are. Right? Because that’s the last thing they remember from school and we have those. And then every now and then kids will come in with this vast accumulation of knowledge and they want more of it. We have a kid here now interesting quantum physics and string theory and really can have very in depth conversations with you about these things. Like you hand him Steven Hawking’s book and he lights up. That’s this kid, right? If all you want is a comic book and some candy, I can do that for you. Right. A lot of these kids have not had the opportunity to be a kid. So I don’t wanna always be coming at a kid with something heavy and deep about being incarcerated or most of the time kids just wanna be kids. Or if you want something a lot more sophisticated, I can do that for you too. We want kids for the 45 minutes that they’re here in a week to forget where they are. To know that they’re just in the library. And to remember that they’re kids.

Zaidee:

Lisa makes it a priority to get to know each and every kid.

Lisa:

And they come down in a line, walk in the door, we bump fist, Hey, how you doing? It’s very important to me, like super important to me that I make personal contact with every kid who’s here, you know. Years ago, there was a kid here who tried to kill himself. And when they were sort of talking to him about how he had gotten there, the thing that kept coming out was that nobody will miss me. Nobody sees me and no one will miss me. And I always think about that when I think I wanna know your name. Kids here are generally referred to by their last name. I wanna know your first name. Like what your mother named you. What grade are you in? How old are you? And do you like to read? If you do, let me, let me turn you onto some things here, but if you don’t, let’s talk about that too, cuz it’s a great way to pass the time.

Zaidee:

The library is meant to be a safe Haven, a place where kids can read and find books. Yes. But also play games, watch movies, let it all out.

Lisa:

Kids here don’t have a whole lot of outlets for all of the emotions that they’re feeling. So we often get kids who come in and just cry,

Lisa:

Right? Because they’ve been in court. They’re not sure what’s gonna happen to them. They’re scared on top of everything else going on in their lives. They’re teenagers. Being a teenager is, is tough by any measure. It just is. And we want kids to be comfortable enough to say I can’t read or I need some help. And some kids are, and some kids, it takes a little bit more sort of digging just like it does with adults, but we wanna catch them before they end up at Santa Rita.

Zaidee:

Santa Rita is an Alameda County jail for adults. Betty, you saw a couple of different groups of students show up to the library. Can you kind of describe some of the things you saw?

Betty:

So the first group that came in, they were part of the intake unit. They had just arrived a few days prior inside the juvenile hall. And so regardless of whether the library staff knew them or not, as soon as they walked in, the students were greeted with fist bumps just really greeting them to make them feel welcomed into this space. I noticed one of the library staff, he speaks Spanish and he greeted at least one or two in Spanish. And so they walked in a few of the students walked directly to specific sections. It seemed like they had already been in the space at least once before. And so some of them walked over to the African American fiction section. A few others walked over to the poetry section and then a handful of them really stayed in the middle where the two tables are with a few different game sets.

Betty:

And two of them started playing chess. One of them knew how to play chess. The other one did not know. And at one point one of the library, staff handed him a printed guide for how to play and that didn’t quite seem to help. And so he grew so frustrated that he started cursing and eventually got up from the table very abruptly and walked away. And when Lisa Harris you know, she noticed this, she walked over to that student and asked, you know, what’s going on? And he exclaimed I don’t know how to read. I don’t know why I even came here to begin with.

Zaidee:

Lisa Harris told us as well that like, it’s not very common for a student to just outright say I can’t read. But usually they look for other kinds of signs for what that might indicate that someone is struggling to read.

Betty:

Right. Some of those indicators might be that a student just flips through the pages constantly. Doesn’t really stop to read any of the pages, perhaps gravitates over to books that have larger font, very few words. Perhaps just says that they don’t want to read at all and are not interested in it in any way.

Lisa:

So it might be something as simple as a kid who comes in and doesn’t engage at all. They got all this around them and they’re not engaging at all. I just wanna get outta here. Or a kid who come out and say, I don’t read. Not, I can’t read, but yeah, I’m not with books. I don’t do that. That’s a red flag right there.

Zaidee:

And then they get one on one support for those who do need it. Right?

Betty:

So they do have literacy specialists who are also a part of the library. And so they do one on one literacy support that might include going, you know, to phonics, really trying to learn how to decode a word, how to do reading comprehension, right. Reading a paragraph and trying to then understand what that passage was trying to get across. And so it’s a variety of exercises and it really depends on the student and where they are, but that’s the point of those literacy specialists. And they do work sometimes in conjunction with paraeducators who are part of the Alameda County Office of Education.

Zaidee:

Beyond one-on-one literacy, help, Lisa has all different ways she tries to incentivize reading. Snacks, movie nights, right now she’s using a particularly inventive way to get kids to read.

Lisa:

I got a box of socks behind my desk, kind of warm, wooly socks. And I’ve been asking kids to write book reviews for me about a book that they read and then we feature it. What was it about? What did it try to do? Was it trying to scare you? Was it trying to make you think? Or was it just giving you something to enjoy and did it accomplish that? And if they can write that for me and like three paragraphs, they’ll get a pair of socks.

Zaidee:

And the library uses other creative ways to engage kids with reading. For example, they started a book group focused on books that were made into movies.

Lisa:

And so we’re reading the books, we’re talking about the books, listening to the books. And one of the groups the kids are listening to a recording of the book, asking them to close their eyes and visualize it. It is The Body by Steven King that the movie Stand By Me was based on. Some of them have seen it. Some of them haven’t. So close your eyes and think about it. If you have seen it, who is this person? And then when we’re done the kids get movie day, right, where they get to watch the movie about boys just being boys. And we’ll bring in, we promised them cheeseburgers, so we’re gonna have that. Yeah. And then we’ll move on to the next book. Right? So, you know, I try to make a book connection in every way, every possible way. And I encourage our team to do the same.

Zaidee:

Betty, how innovative is Alameda County’s library program? Do other counties in California have libraries inside their juvenile halls?

Betty:

In reporting this story I did learn about at least two other juvenile halls who have libraries. And they are also in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Zaidee:

What are some of the challenges that this library program faces?

Betty:

There are a handful and it’s really challenges that anyone in the education space inside these juvenile halls face, I think. They might be getting released in the middle of, you know, being able to connect with them. And the library staff won’t always know that they’re about to be released, which it’s a good thing, right. For them to be released. But to be able to perhaps have a closure to that would be very beneficial to the work that the library tries to do day in and day out. There’s also really no consistency of them in the amount of time that the staff might have to connect with students because some of these students are there for just a handful of days. Some of them are there for months. At least one student that they mentioned to me had been there for three years.

Betty:

And so there’s no consistency. So it’s not like you can really plan how to connect with these students. It really has to depend on a case by case basis. And there’s also quite a few interruptions during library time. You know, just when I was there, the first group of students that walked in there were at least two phone calls within the first five minutes to have one of the students be taken somewhere else. So he wasn’t able to have library time that day. And he did ask Lisa and Raul who was another library staff person to take some books for him because he wasn’t going to have the chance to look through and pick one,

Zaidee:

No matter how much time a particular young person spends in the library, Lisa wants the library to open up their world.

Lisa:

I’m of the mind that a kid, we all are the sum of our experiences and our exposures, right? And the things that we’re exposed to often form our experiences and the less we’re exposed to the less positive experiences we can have. You know, but we wanna show kids there’s more to life than what you you’re doing.

Zaidee:

She knows she can’t always change kids’ lives completely.

Lisa:

You know, I’m not naive. And I know that this is only one very small part of what’s going on in their life, but I know some kids don’t have a choice. I had a kid couple years ago one of those extremely exceedingly brilliant kids. And I remember the last time we saw him here, dude, you could be teaching college courses. Like he kind of perused the shelves, like a college professor. He had that bearing. Only to get out and be murdered in that sort of slate of murders that happened in Oakland. That kid told me one time he didn’t have a choice. So I’m not naive about these things, but we just wanna expose you to some other things. And if you can see way past this, there’s a big world out there.

Zaidee:

So she tries to give every single kid something last year, one kid was introduced to poetry in the library.

Lisa:

And came in, just kind of tangentially. Yeah. I might see what’s up with it. And then really starting to read it a lot and then starting to write it. And discovering he had a real talent for it.

Zaidee:

So the library staff encouraged him to enter the Alameda County youth poet Laureate competition.

Lisa:

Lo and behold, you know, he came in second place.

Zaidee:

And that one kid who was interested in quantum physics, Lisa’s getting him in touch with a student from UC Berkeley to give him more information about the field and potential careers.

Lisa:

So I wanna give him some stuff he can really chew on and know that he has a future. That’s the thing, showing people, they have a future beyond these walls.

Zaidee:

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Education Beat, getting to the heart of California schools, a production of EdSource. You can find Betty’s story at edsource.org. Our producer is Coby McDonald. Special thanks to our guests Lisa Harris and Betty Marquez Rosales. Our CEO is Anne Vasquez. Our theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions. This episode was brought to you by the California Wellness Foundation. I’m Zaidee Stavely. Join me next week and subscribe. So you won’t miss an episode.