“There is a thin and sometimes slippery line between being a creative, caring teacher and being a security minded corrections employee for a maximum security adult male prison.”
— Lois Colton, author Teaching to a Captive Audience
Teaching to a Captive Audience
Lois Colton is an award-winning teacher whose students happened to be felony inmates at Oregon State’s oldest penal institution.
Teaching to a Captive Audience unfolds on the Education Floor of the heavily fortified Oregon State Penitentiary, where the haunting echoes of 150 years of inmates’ spirits and pain shape the experiences of both the author and her inmate students who work and live within its confines.
The essays in the book blend to create a narrative prison documentary and a teaching memoir. Colton draws from two decades of experience teaching basic literacy to high security felony male inmates to paint a vivid sensory experience of an inmate's world as observed through the lens of a compassionate, determined educator. Colton’s rare vantage point reveals a profound glimpse into how prisoners work, play, study, celebrate and pursue relationships and spirituality all within the confined space, limited freedom, and scarce resources available to them.
Despite the darkness and violence ever present in any prison setting, the stories in Teaching to a Captive Audience connect the reader’s to the human element of life behind bars while illustrating the importance of education to transform lives, the value of the bonds created between teachers and learners, and the remarkable adaptability and resilience of the human spirit—three things Ms. Colton encountered among the incarcerated everyday during her 20 year career.
Ever the teacher, Colton argues that prison is a living community — a hidden city behind prison walls that represents a microcosm of our society. She hopes that each story will foster an introspection of our culture as a whole and reconsideration of incarceration as our primary response to criminal behavior.
Teaching to a Captive Audience is currently in the process of publication.
Lois Colton teaching inmate students on the Education Floor of the Oregon State Penitentiary.
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![Prison art]()
Prison art is a way
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![prison art]()
for inmates to express
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![prison art]()
creativity, imagination, gratitude, and
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thoughtfulness using limited resources
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to pass long hours
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of cell confinement.
Additional Resources on Education & Incarceration
While this video does not feature Lois Colton, it does offer a humanizing and insightful look at inmates engaged in an adult education program at the Oregon State Penitentiary. It serves as a complimentary source, aligning with Lois' perspective on the transformative power of education within prison walls.
Invite Lois to speak at your event
Lois offers the distilled wisdom of a prestigious career in adult education, and she would be happy to discuss the possibility of speaking at your event.