From the Inside-Out: Rowan workshop examines unique class for university students and men and women in prisons

March 26, 2008

Last summer, Rowan University Writing Arts instructor Tara Timberman attended the Inside-Out National Instructor Training Institute, presented by Lori Pompa at Temple University.

On Friday, April 4, Timberman, who says the training experience was transformative to her personally and as an instructor, will welcome Pompa and two of her former students to Rowan for "Transformative Pedagogy: The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program Visits Rowan University."

The workshop will run from 1-4 p.m. in Room 3114 of Education Hall and is open to Rowan students, faculty and staff.

Founded in 1997 at Temple, Inside-Out brings college students together with incarcerated men and women to study issues of crime and justice as peers in a class held behind prison walls.

Pompa, an instructor in Temple's criminal justice department, took the program nationwide in 2003. Since then, more than 133 college and university instructors from 33 states and 90 institutions have completed Inside-Out training. Altogether, more than 5,000 "inside" and "outside" students have taken Inside-Out classes.

The workshop at Rowan will provide information how to become an Inside-Out instructor and will also demonstrate how the program, and other experiential training, can work to transform lives.

Two of Pompa's former students, who attended her classes while in prison, will discuss their experiences. They include Anthony Persiano, who spent a decade on death row for a crime he didn't commit, and Angela Crafton, who served time on drug charges. Crafton went on to graduate from Temple, with high honors, with an art education degree.

"After completing the Inside-Out program, I developed a deep understanding of how experiential and critical pedagogies can transform a student's experience in a classroom," says Timberman, who teaches literature and writing courses to incarcerated men at Fairton Federal Correctional Facility in Cumberland County.

In programs such as Inside-Out, says Timberman, distinctions between instructors and students, personal histories, identities and stereotypes slip away.

"And for all of those involved, education becomes what it always should be: transformational," she says.


"Part of what is wonderful about Inside-Out is the way in which students who bring very different values, experiences, approaches to learning and knowledge bases come together and learn with and from one another," Pompa has said.

The Rowan forum is organized by Timberman and sponsored by the Office of Service-Learning and Volunteerism, the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and Timberman's College Composition II students.

Groups or classes wishing to attend the session should contact Timberman at timberman@rowan.edu. For more information on Inside-Out, visit www.temple.edu/inside-out/.