This packet can serve as a template for teachers who want to try a project like the one
Carol Tyx and Mary Vermillion describe in their article, “Literature Goes to Prison: A
Reciprocal Service Learning Project.” This particular packet was used in EN300 Law and
Literature, an upper-level literature course for English majors and students in Mount
Mercy’s legal studies minor.
Tyx and Vermillion have adapted this template for use in a wide variety of literature and
writing courses: EN116 Writing and Memoir, EN133 African American Literature,
EN176 American Literature Colonial to 1914, EN210 Writing and the Analysis of
Literature, EN234 Shakespeare, EN256 Victorian Literature, EN278 American Literature
1914-Present, EN321 Topics in Creative Writing: Personal Essay.
In adapting the template for different classes, Tyx and Vermillion often change the
supplemental readings on page 2 and rework the reflective writing assignment depending
on the course objectives. See the handout on adaptations for more details.
Anamosa Book Club Service Learning Project Checklist:
The entire project is worth 20% of your course grade.
Before the ASP Book Club:
___ Read prison-related texts listed on page 2 of this handout.
___ With your small group (during our class time on March 8), plan your ASP
discussion.
___ First-time participants must complete the orientation and tour at ASP Thursday
March 10. You’ll leave campus at 12:15 p.m., and you’ll be back on campus no later than
3:15. Further details will be forthcoming.
___ Before your ASP discussion, e-mail me a document that the inmates can read and use
to prepare for the discussion. This document should include a greeting, information that
will help them read the text, and discussion questions. You may also want to give the
Anamosa students a heads-up on the icebreaker and other activities you have planned.
___ Facilitate ASP Book Club; we’ll leave campus at 4:30 and arrive back on campus
around 7:30; further details will be forthcoming (worth 5% of course grade).
After the ASP discussion:
___ On the way home from the discussion, begin identifying what went well and what
you’d do differently if you were going to do it again; discuss what you learned
___ Write your reflective essay due Tues. April 5 (Instructions are on pages 6-8 of this
packet. This writing is worth 15% of your course grade.)
Preparatory Readings for Anamosa Book Club
You are required to read the following brief texts. Ideally, you should read them before
working with your group to plan your ASP discussion.*
“Facts About Prisons and Prisoners.” The Sentencing Project. June 2011. Web.
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/publications/inc_factsAboutPrisons_Jun201
1.pdf.
Jackson, Spoon. “On Prison Reform.” SFGate. 14 July 2006. San Francisco Chronicle. Web.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/14/EDGSEJUNEO1.DTL&type=printable.
Mauer, Marc and Ryan S. King. “Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and
Ethnicity.” The Sentencing Project. July 2007. Web.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_stateratesofincbyraceandethnicity.
pdf. Read only pp 1-5.
McLaughlin, Meghan, Jean Trounstine, Robert P. Waxler. “Success Stories: Life Skills Through
Literature.” January 1997.
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OVAE/AdultEd/OCE/SuccessStories/success.pdf. Read only
pp 5-9, 18-21, 29-32.
Please also read/consult at least one of the following sources:
“Arts and Corrections.” Community Arts Network. Art in the Public Interest.
Web.http://www.communityarts.net/archivefiles/corrections/index.php. A portal site that
features links to several essays about community-based arts in prisons.
Changing Lives Through Literature. UMass-Dartmouth. Web. http://cltl.umassd.edu. CLTL is an
alternative sentencing program started by English professors at UMass-Dartmouth. In
lieu of incarceration, participants discuss literature with each other and with judges,
probation officers, and literature instructors.
The Sentencing Project. Web. http://www.sentencingproject.org. Founded in 1986, The
Sentencing Project is a Washington D.C.-based organization that promotes reforms in
sentencing law and practice and alternatives to incarceration. In particular the Project
addresses racial disparity in the criminal justice system and the disenfranchisement of
felons. The site features lots of sobering statistics and several articles.
Tannenbaum, Judith. Judith Tannenbaum. Web. http://judithtannenbaum.com. This site was
created by a poet who has taught poetry in prison and written about it. The resources on
her Prison Arts page are particularly helpful.
*If you’ve already participated in an ASP Book Club, you’ve already read the
materials above. Instead, I’d like you to read the last chapter of Martha Nussbaum’s
Poetic Justice. She describes the ways in which “literary” techniques can make judges
more effective and humane. Many of her ideas resonate with the philosophy of Changing
Lives Through Literature: the notion that literature can have a rehabilitative power.
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Preparing and Planning the Anamosa Book Club
Read some brief texts that will help you better understand prison culture or arts-in-prison
(see page 2 of this handout). These texts will increase your ability to facilitate a
discussion that will be meaningful and engaging for the Anamosa students. The texts will
also enhance your own learning.
Decide your goals for the discussion at ASP. Some of these will be content goals related
to the text. (For instance, “the group will explore two inter-related themes.” Or “the
group will relate the novel to current events.”). Keep in mind, however, that your most
important goal is an affective one related to the inmates. You want to create an
experience that enables them to gain confidence in their abilities to read, interpret, and
discuss literature. (Your group, of course, may formulate other affective goals).
Once your group has agreed upon a set of goals, determine the combination of discussion
questions and activities that will help you best achieve them during the hour and a half
that you will have with the Anamosa students.
Each group should plan an ice-breaker. For instance, each person introduces him/herself
and shares something related to the text, such as
a question
the character they most identified with and why
a passage or scene they liked or found important
You may also want to design some sort of activity besides large-group discussion.
Prepare a written greeting and set of instructions/questions for the Anamosa
students. Ideally, someone in the group should e-mail these to me (as a Micrsoft
Word attachment) no later than a week before your discussion is scheduled at ASP.
I will forward your study guide to Mary Feeney-Wilfer at ASP, and she will give your
materials to her students. Your group is welcome to use or adapt questions from the study
guides I gave you, but you should also create new ones. Consider what sorts of questions
would be most interesting and relevant to the ASP students. Of course, you will give
them a chance to ask questions near the beginning of your time together, but you should
still try to anticipate what topics they’ll want to discuss and create some of your own
questions and activities accordingly. Prioritize. Strategize.
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Tips for Planning and Facilitating Effective Discussions
Your work as a discussion facilitator at ASP will be different than your work as a
discussion participant at MMU. As a student/participant, your job in class discussion is to
share your ideas with your classmates; to develop, formulate, and test your ideas; to ease
your confusion; to demonstrate what you know and think. The emphasis is on you.
At ASP, the emphasis needs to be on the inmates. Ideally, they will speak more than you
will. Your job is not to impress anyone (me, your classmates, or the inmates) with your
knowledge or ideas, but to enable the inmates to share and develop their thinking. Of
course, you’ll also participate in the discussion—the inmates are interested in hearing
your points of view—but keep the focus on their questions and ideas. Don’t present your
ideas on a topic until you’ve given the Anamosa students a chance to share.
Creating Effective Discussion Questions
adapted from University of Iowa English Professor Huston Diehl
When you prepare discussion questions, ask yourself the following:

Are the questions worth your time and effort to answer?

Do they engage, interest, challenge, and excite you?

Does answering them matter? Are they relevant?

Are there a number of possible answers, responses, interpretations to your
question?

Do your questions have the potential to spark debate or illuminate ambiguity or
bring forward different, even contradictory ideas and interpretations?

Do your questions require thought?

Can the asking of them initiate self-reflection, stimulate further inquiry, contribute
to insights or epiphanies?
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Facilitating Effective Discussions: A Short Guide
adapted from the work of Katherine K. Gottschalk, Cornell University
1. Wait for responses after a question has been asked. Allow at least ten seconds so that
everyone has time to reflect. If the silence makes you tense, try a phrase such as “Take a
few seconds to consider this question…” or “Let’s take a moment to think about…”
2. If you’ve waited and there is still no response to your question, try the following:
Rephrase the question.
Ask a related, but easier question
Ask students to examine a passage that might help them respond to the question.
3. When students do respond, affirm and acknowledge their responses.
A. Listen and maintain eye contact.
B. If you don’t understand a response, ask for clarification.
C. If the student says something that intrigues you, ask a follow-up question.
D. Encourage students to respond to each others’ questions and comments. For
example: “What does everybody think about Bob’s interpretation of Vere’s
speech?” “Can anyone find a passage or scene that supports Bob’s idea?”
E. Make connections between students’ comments. Act as mediator/facilitator:
summarize, organize, re-direct; keep the question or problem in view; keep order.
If appropriate, keep a written record of students' contributions and questions on
the board.
F. Don't focus only on your own goals and on the (perhaps tiny) part of the student's
response that applies to that goal.
4. Welcome disagreement as a “teachable moment.” Use it to show that good literature
can prompt several different interpretations. Use it to show students how to disagree
agreeably and without fear or anger.
* * *
Have a plan, but be prepared to improvise.
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Reflective writing assignment on the Anamosa Book Club
(worth 15% of course grade)—due Tues. April 5
All participants:
Support your ideas with direct quotations from both primary and secondary sources.
Primary sources include literary texts and discussions with classmates and inmates.
Secondary sources include texts about prison culture and arts-in-prison (such as those
listed on page 2 of this handout).
Please submit both a paper and an electronic copy of your essay.
To evaluate your essay, I’ll use the essay rubric in the assignments section of our course’s
MyCampus page.
First-timers:
Write a 5-8-page essay (typed and double-spaced) in which you reflect on your learning
during this project.
Section 1
Describe and reflect on the ways in which Book Club reinforced, challenged, or enriched
your interpretation and understanding of Antigone or Billy Budd.
Section 2
Describe and reflect on what the project helped you understand about the interpretive
process and about the power and purpose of literature. If the project provides you with
any insight related to the questions below (also featured on page 1 of our syllabus), please
discuss those insights as well.
1. How does the law impact society? How does literature? How do law and
literature function similarly? Differently?
2. How do law and literature shape the following:
 our self-concepts, our ideas about personal identity?
 our ethics or morality, our ideas about right and wrong?
 our epistemology, our ideas about how knowledge and "the truth" are
discovered?
3. Why do so many literary writers explore aspects of the law? More specifically,
why are so many literary writers drawn to the trial scene?
4. What can the trial process teach us about the writer’s tasks in creating a work
of literature? About the reader’s tasks in interpreting it?
5. What are the advantage and disadvantages of emphasizing law in the study of
literature?
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6. How might the study of literature impact law students, lawyers, or others who
work within the legal system?
Section 3
Describe and reflect on other ways in which Book Club has impacted you or helped you
change or grow.
Reflect on the ways in which the entire experience (including the orientation and tour)
impacted your perception of prison and prisoners. Before the tour (and before you read
any of the writings mentioned in this packet), please ponder the following questions:
A. What—specifically—do you expect to see and experience at the prison? What
do you imagine the inmates will be like? The staff? The environment/setting?
B. What shapes your expectations? How did you form them? From watching TV
or movies? Reading? Coursework? Conversations? Other?
C. How do you imagine you will feel during the tour? What do you anticipate
thinking about or questioning?
D. How might the tour prepare you to lead a discussion with some of the ASP
students? How do you plan to make the most of your learning during the tour?
In your essay, consider the ways in which the prison, inmates, and staff met or failed to
meet your expectations. In what ways, if any, did your perception of prison and prisoners
shift? What surprised you? Puzzled you? Disturbed you? What other thoughts, feelings,
questions arose for you?
Otherwise, the sky is the limit in Section 3. Here are some suggestions to spark your
thinking:
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
Review Mount Mercy’s mission and goals (http://www.mtmercy.edu/our-missionvision-and-values), and discuss the ways in which Book Club helped you work
toward achieving one or more of them.
Consider the list of transferable job skills at Quintessential Careers
(http://www.quintcareers.com/transferable_skills_set.html) and discuss the ways
in which you’ve developed some of them while working on the project.
Reflect on your beliefs or values that the experience strengthened or confirmed.
And/or reflect on your beliefs or values that the experience called into question.
Reflect on new insights, questions, or interests that you’ve developed.
Reflect on other ways you’ve grown intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or
socially.
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Book Club veterans:
Write an approximately 5-page essay, featuring the three sections described above, but do
not simply repeat ideas that you shared in your earlier essay about the project. Instead,
reflect on the ways in which your new experiences at ASP build upon your former ones.
or
You may do the following two-part option.
1. Write an approximately three-page essay, responding to Sections 1 and 2 above.
In section 2, do not simply repeat ideas that you shared in your earlier essay about
the project. Instead, reflect on the ways in which your new experiences at ASP
build upon your former ones.
2. Help the Mount Mercy English faculty develop material for its web pages.
Address your writings below to current and prospective MMU students.
A. Write a brief article (1-2 typed and double-spaced pages) that persuades
students to participate in the service learning project at ASP.
B. Write a blurb (one or two catchy, concise sentences) that praises the
service learning project at ASP.
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