The Plan

.When I returned to our prison school the principal was waiting for me. He had already spoken with the principal whose facility I had visited. I was tired from the ride back and we agreed to talk about my trip in the morning. He asked what I thought about prison horticulture and I informed him if he gave me “card blanche” I could make this place look like the land of “OZ!.” He laughed and said we have to impact our community. I laughed also and said I have a plan for that as well. My past experience working in two large urban university teaching hospitals taught me to have a plan a, b, c, d, e,… what ever it took to get the goal implemented. I thought I would have no problem doing this here and making this place look like “OZ” was going to be part of the plan no matter how many times I revised it.

.The next morning my meeting with our school principal ended with a meeting in our warden’s office. He informed us that all the approvals needed to begin building the greenhouse had come through and our maintenance department would begin construction immediately. My job was to oversee the construction and hire horticulture tutors who preferably had a degree in agriculture/horticulture or experience in either. That was easier said than done as I would find out. The curriculum would come from my mentoring facilities program and would include books, videos, cd’s, and a plotter which was used to monitor completion of classroom and field work experience we called OJT. (On the job training). The OJT would include the hours worked in the greenhouse, landscaping, and gardens. I set the gardens up to include community and student plots. The student plots were set up for 3 students in one plot which made for an interesting dynamic. A Horticulture completion would include all book work, labs, and a minimum of 200 hours of OJT spread out between the greenhouse, gardens, and landscape.

.In the beginning years 1995-2003 I was still responsible for teaching level 4 and level 2 custodial maintenance six months of the year-October 1 through April 1. When I completed the custodial maintenance students I moved on to teaching horticulture. This was not always easy to do and I found my self overlapping subject times. Custody officers and deputies were quick to question what I was doing (its their job) and I found myself pressured often to complete one subject matter entirely before moving on to the next. The prison was not an easy environment to complete teaching goals. Stabbings, beatings, leading to assault and murder charges from the state were regular occurrence in this environment. When assaults happened the prison would be locked down. The school would be closed. The teachers were usually assigned to housing units and had to report to custody supervisors. The principals were to report to a “think tank” in the warden’s conference room. I found the think tanks usually included the “friends of the warden’s” all others were to work together and complete what ever task custody supervisors had assigned. The lock downs did not keep me from putting together a horticulture plan. I continued to work on what I thought I could accomplish here in the “Land of Oz.” To be continued ..