“ A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way “
Mark Twain
I figured out rather quickly that for every action I completed towards implementing the Horticulture class at the prison I could expect an equal and opposite reaction from my detractors. It is the social physics phenomena known as “push back,” and it occurred as regularly as I had class projects completed. The greenhouse was completed and I began filling it with houseplants. I instructed my classroom tutors to begin making a blue print of the walkways where we would begin making the flower laboratories, the herb gardens, and the vegetable gardens. I wanted them to include only the structures that would be included inside our facility like the housing units, chow hall, and greenhouse. All would have their own forms of garden laboratories in the level two prison yards. The view would be top down and drawn to scale on a regular 3′ x 5′ blue print sheet. That sheet would later be transcribed to a much larger parchment 10′ x 10′ drawn to scale and composed of 8″ x 11″ sheets of paper taped together. I used that blue print to decide what would be planted where throughout my tenure with the prison.
Our maintenance department was instrumental in our program. Without their help we could not have accomplished all that we did. They installed the large blue print on the wall in my classroom, and we used it for a reference point for instructing our students. We decided to grow mostly annuals so that the landscape floriculture would change every year. The warden was shown the original 3′ X 5′ blueprint and asked if he could keep it. He thought it was an ambitious plan and he would use it as a guide to see what we actually implemented each year. One big concern of his was how much we could grow in our vegetable gardens, how much could be used in our chow hall and how much could be donated to our immediate community. On paper and in theory this undertaking would benefit the prison staff, the prison population, and our immediate community. Making it work that way was not always that easy. I would tell my students on a regular basis, “there is gardening and then there is prison gardening. A totally unique experience.”
Prison gardening included keeping track of every student on the level 2 yard working to complete the flower and vegetable garden projects. My students were issued garden rakes, shovels. and hand shovels to plant with by me. My tutors would record who took what tool. It was their job to make sure the tool was returned. If it wasn’t returned it was my job to find it. I can honestly say that in my 25 year career in prison education I rarely had to retrieve a tool. Many tools were broken from use and had to be replaced, but not one was lost. The ramifications for a student losing a tool resulted in their immediate lock up in segregation. I would remind my students daily that a tool lost by them would result in their performance of the “backward ballot.” Them walking backwards with their hands handcuffed as the officers escorted them to segregation, and removal from the assignment. They didn’t want that and honestly neither did I. I also emphasized that this programs’ success depended on their performance, and accountability. A tool lost could be used as a weapon. They seemed cognizant of that, and wanted the program to be successful. My students seemed dedicated. Many would be paroling in the near future, and they wanted good reports in their school files while they participated in this program. To be continued….
MJ-Way 