Revolutionary Reads: A Conversation About the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Hybrid)

The school-to-prison pipeline is a necessary part of any conversation about mass incarceration, law  enforcement, crime and punishment, and community responsibility. Education and learning are  incredibly important to all of us as humans, but we all know that all educational experience is not equal.  Black, Indigenous, disabled, and poor students are the most likely to end up in this pipeline, but why?  None of us believe our schools do this on purpose, so how does the school-to-prison pipeline work?  Who is most likely to end up in it and why? What is the role of a community in closing the pipeline?  

Join us for an introduction to this issue and a conversation about what we can all do to help end its  impact on our children and families. Whether you and your family have been directly impacted by the  pipeline or mass incarceration, good educational experiences make our communities and societies  stronger. Making sure children and adults both have access to those good experiences is our shared  responsibility. 

We’re welcoming emareena danielles, a master educator, field researcher, and public scholar at the  intersection of education, corrections, criminal legal reform, and abolition. They are compelled to  ground their work in what they hear from community groups and impacted people and families, learning  also from thinkers, activists, mystics, practitioners, and healers. Their formal education includes a  Master’s of Science in Teaching from Portland State University, and a B.A. in Communications from the  University of North Carolina – Charlotte. emareena has been studying and exploring barriers to learning,  and what it means to be a “better teacher,” for close to 25 years.  

Their first text Building a Trauma-Responsive Educational Practice: Lessons from a Corrections  Classroom, is the first book to address the impacts of trauma on adult learning, and provide a guide to  working in carceral spaces. The text also invites curiosity about how we can bring joy into challenging  times and spaces, and what that can mean for learners. emareena focuses on countering the impacts of  trauma on learning as a way to guide students toward rediscovering themselves as strong and capable  learners, and one pathway to a joyful and compassionate world.

This is a hybrid program with the option of attending online or in-person. For online attendance click on the following link at the time of the event: Google Meet Link. *You will need a computer, tablet or phone with a camera and microphone.

Revolutionary Reads is an annual community reads program with the goal of galvanizing the SW Washington community to read the same book on a topic of revolutionary importance. Revolutionary is defined as “involving or causing a complete and dramatic change” and/or “radically new or innovative; outside or beyond established procedure, principles, etc.”

In partnership with the Foundation Washington, 2024’s program focuses on the challenge of reentry into society following incarceration. This program will explore the experiences of individuals reintegrating into community upon release. 

Free copies of the book FREE: Two Years, Six Lives and the Long Journey Home by Lauren Kessler, will be available at all FVRLibraries locations in March 2024 (eBook also available on Overdrive). FREE won the 2023 Oregon Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2023 Nautilus Silver Award for Criminal Justice.  

Foundation Washington’s mission is to restore and prepare. The Foundation Washington is the stepping stones the youth can use to rise into their greatness and the landing zone reintegrating individuals can lean on upon release. Learn more about the Foundation Washington at https://www.thefoundationwa.org/

Revolutionary Reads is made possible by generous support from the FVRL Foundation. Visit their website at https://fvrlfoundation.org/.