"On the outs" is how those at the county's juvenile detention center describe not being behind the locked doors that 650 young people passed through last year.
MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Friday, January 11, 2008 6:00 pm
The young man with close-cropped strawberry blond hair and a standard-issue gray sweatshirt will tell you he hates to read — unequivocally.
But consider this: In the past 43 days, the 16-year-old who got messed up in some things and found himself living in a concrete building with locks on the doors has read seven books. Seven.
Books about race and about basketball, and a whole series featuring a group of young spies. This, from someone who rarely cracked a book when he was “on the outs.”
“On the outs” is how the kids at Lancaster County’s juvenile detention center describe not being behind the locked doors that 650 young people passed through last year — a quarter of them more than once.
Their offenses range from vandalism to substance abuse, to murder, to such “status offenses” as being chronic runaways.
They are at the center while their cases wind their way through the juvenile justice system. Some go through the adult system.
And they are all in limbo, waiting to see what a judge says will happen next.
Meanwhile, much of their time is scheduled: life skills classes, visiting hours, meals and meetings with counselors and probation officers and attorneys.
But they sleep in 8-by-10-foot rooms of concrete block with metal doors that lock behind them. They exercise in a small outdoor area surrounded by brick walls, where sunlight comes through wire mesh above them. They eat food shipped from the Lancaster County Jail.
And, for 5½ hours a day, they go to school.
Here, school is less about standardized tests and GPAs than building relationships, because the hurdles students face are higher than a tough final.
Most of them struggled in regular school. Many had spotty attendance. And everyone is awaiting uncertain futures.
“We try to make school a little haven away from that, but it’s always on your mind,” said special education liaison Jean Bartels. “I mean, you’re wearing someone else’s underwear. You’re not at home, you’re sleeping on a cement bunk. You’ve got a lot of other things to focus on.”
The education program, called Pathfinder, is run by Lincoln Public Schools and was created not just to help kids earn academic credits, but to help them learn.
“Everyone has the innate ability to learn,” said Richard Krause, who designed the program that started when the detention center just south of the Nebraska State Penitentiary opened in 2002.
“What we stumble into is kids that have been disenchanted so much that they’ve lost that. We approached it from the point that they needed to be reinvigorated by learning.”
And so teachers meet students where they are. They help them catch up, earn credits toward graduation or work toward GEDs. But the overriding goal is to make connections, to help students see their futures differently.
“If you come from the perspective of (struggling) for everything, and everything is hard, you don’t see the future that is out there,” said program supervisor Randy Farmer. “We want to plant seeds and ideas. Just to show them it’s possible.”
Science teacher Dirk Baker is armed with a guitar and a pink hand mirror that emits a rather ominous-sounding laugh, his 4-year-old daughter’s violin, a tuning fork and a SpongeBob toy that repeats back whatever is said into it. Oh yeah, and drums.
He is in the detention center’s highest security pod, where kids spend their entire day, except for P.E.
And they are learning how vibrations make sound, in human vocal cords and little pink mirrors.
His lecture flies from eardrums to the pink mirror to shopping at Goodwill to parenting. Then back to vocal cords. And guitars. And violins.
This is science cloaked in stand-up comedy, and by the end every one of the six young men is laughing. Or playing the guitar. Or putting hands to throats to feel the vibrations when they hum.
If this school is about making connections, Baker does it with humor.
“I’m willing to do the Robin Williams routine and talk, not on a street level, but making it comfortable for them to take risks.”
That’s why he brings in Hot Wheels to calculate distance.
“That’s safe,” he said. “Everybody wants to play with Hot Wheels.”
It’s one of the ways teachers meet the challenges they face. Students are different ages and at widely different skill levels. And the roster changes daily, so it’s hard to have one lesson build on another.
Baker takes a concept, finds a hands-on way to teach it and adjusts it for each student, more challenging for some, less for others.
Learning the concepts is important, he says, but he measures success in other ways.
“When you see a kid who used to be so polarized against the world and he’s making statements where he’s leading others in the pod … does it mean they get on the outs and run for Senate? No.
“But once they get to that place where they open their mind, they can’t go back.”
Nancy Campbell calls it the Happy Circle. The class is designed to help students see themselves in a more positive light, to learn empathy.
Each student takes a turn around the circle, saying something positive that’s happened that day. Their comments are framed by the realities of limited freedom and the looming presence of the justice system.
“I might get to go home today.”
“I got to eat a piece of chocolate.”
“I’m alive.”
“I went to court.”
“They lowered my bond.”
Then, Campbell spreads laminated cards on the floor and the students pick one that shows how they really feel.
Sad. Mad. Hurt. Ashamed. Afraid.
On this day just before Christmas, they are all of those things because they can’t be with their families, their girlfriends, their friends.
They are frustrated because the court system moves so slowly — and sometimes it seems they’re the last ones to know what’s happening.
“I’m depressed,” says a young man about to turn 18 and move into the adult system. “I’m supposed to be in court in 15 minutes. It’s an hour away.”
The point, Campbell says, is to get them to talk, maybe to help them work through what’s going on in their lives. It’s another way to make a connection, a relationship.
Ask the students what they think, and you hear about those relationships: How teachers care, how they help when asked, make sure kids understand.
“I think school here is very helpful,” says a 17-year-old boy who’s been at the center since November and can’t go back to his high school because of the trouble he got into.
Being here has made him look at things differently, see himself differently.
“The teachers help you to want to do good. They don’t ignore you. They care about you,” he says.
Here, he feels like he’s got the brains to do something, that what happened doesn’t mean his future is predetermined.
“They tell me this isn’t the end of my life. I can still do something.”
He reads now, and has learned to draw.
Several other students say they like school here, too. If they could take classes here, then go home at night, they’d do it.
But it is a detention center, with detention officers in every room. Misbehavior can land students in their room for the day with nothing to do.
“We all hate this place,” says one. “We’re all surrounded by four walls.”
Some chafe at the idea of being in school, of having no choice about it, even if they’ve already got a GED.
But a 17-year-old who had enough credits to graduate at the end of this semester before he got in trouble, who spent part of his summer at the University of Nebraska’s space camp and has his sights on a college degree, says he likes this school better than his old one.
“The school here, to be honest with you, is better for me,” he says. “The teachers know how to cope, teachers know how to help.”
The topic of the day is the presidential campaign. Obama and Clinton, Romney and Huckabee and how they fared in the Iowa caucuses.
Linda Geisert’s students listen and offer their own opinions. This is about presidential politics, but there are other lessons here too.
About educating oneself on the issues. About voting, how that’s real power.
Geisert’s classroom is a staff-secure area where students are least restricted and spend their days in a larger common area, eat family-style and sleep in slightly more comfortable rooms with unlocked doors.
The newest teacher at the school, Geisert saw working here as a great opportunity to teach with a dynamic team at a place with a real chance to make a difference.
“I’m not going to save every kid I encounter. But it’s a process of intervention. Those little messages build up and they finally see where they can go.”
Some teachers use incentives — a cookie or piece of candy for participation or earning credits. For teens who eat food from the jail, a 6-ounce can of pop is like gold.
And they find ways to reach students, like building a full-size dinosaur whose cardboard head touched the ceiling. Students in the staff-secure area have tended gardens and rebuilt a motorcycle. Students read, and they write in journals. Teachers integrate poetry and music into their lessons.
On Fridays, guests from the community visit — ace World War II pilots, archaeologists, rap and hip-hop artists.
The point, Farmer said, is to give kids a picture of the larger community and the opportunities that await them. On Friday afternoons with no guests, they might play board games or eat ice cream sundaes to socialize and have a little fun. To help cast the idea of school in a positive light.
“These teachers are masters at individual education and finding methods to meet the needs of the kids,” Farmer said.
They have to be.
Thirty-eight percent of detention center students are in special education, many with behavioral issues; 10 percent to 15 percent are state wards, although a recent dispute with the state means many state wards have been moved to centers in other counties.
Some students stay for 24 hours, others for six months. And there’s also movement within the center.
“If somebody has a big behavior issue overnight they can be in B-pod (the next day),” Farmer said.
There are also distractions: Students go to evaluations, counseling appointments, court hearings.
A teen who gets bad news can change the dynamic of a class. When someone’s life is crumbling, it’s hard to concentrate on the details of D-Day.
“Those are the challenges that are unique here,” Farmer said.
But there’s also opportunity.
When they’re here, students are free of other distractions: drugs, alcohol, video games, peers saying “come with us.”
And they’ve all had a good night’s sleep and a full breakfast.
“It’s a calm, caring environment, and they flourish,” Farmer said.
Fertile ground, a chance for ideas to take root.
“I’m not concerned that they are able to name the works of Shakespeare,” said English teacher Linda Kern. “But I do believe that they’re on a spiritual journey.
“It is searching. It’s moving down the path of their life and I believe any piece of information, any little tiny thing that I can give them to read or that I can ask them to talk about and think about is going to give them the opportunity for some introspection.”
Nationally, about two-thirds of the young people who spend time in detention centers grow up to lead productive lives, Farmer said.
In Lancaster County, it’s been virtually impossible to do long-term studies of the students because they are so mobile.
Farmer knows maturity cures a lot of problems, although certainly not all.
So the teachers do what they can to help when students leave.
A third end up back in Lincoln Public Schools. Others go places ranging from treatment facilities to group homes to the Youth Rehabilitation Center in Kearney.
Bartels talks with people from other schools and agencies and tells them something about the students coming their way.
The chances at success go up astronomically if they walk into a place where someone knows something about them, Farmer said.
“We’ve worked very hard to establish those relationships, so we’re not some program nobody’s ever heard of,” he said.
Teachers meet weekly to discuss the students who are leaving. They send along a letter with each kid, noting the positive things that happened while he or she was at the center.
Jim Bennett meets with each student to tell them what to expect and answer questions. He’s just starting a tutoring and mentoring program, a contact place for kids once they’re released, because the challenges and distractions they left behind are waiting for them when they get out.
But maybe, a 16-year-old kid who says he still hates to read despite the seven books he’s consumed will remember what else he learned.
“My family’s never been to college,” he says. “So I figure maybe I’ll give it a try.”
Maybe a student will remember that author he discovered, will continue to draw, will see high school graduation in his future. Maybe, those seeds will take root.
And grow.
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.