Oregon Inside-Out in the news

As the final class project, students from Shaul Cohen's "Conflict Resolution in Northern Ireland" class wrote articles about the course and course content for a variety of newsletters and newspapers, including local Eugene news and organizations in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland.  We're really excited to post some of the articles here, and to share how this class and word about Inside-Out is spreading in the community here, and around to the other side of the world.

So here's a link to the first article published by one of our classmates.  We all felt that it was a beautiful reflection of this course, and thank Ben for his dedication and for his writing.  Check out the article here: The Register-Guard.  And check back on the blog--I have a feeling Ben and others will be doing some writing in the coming weeks. 

Final Class Project: Bucknell University and PA State Correctional Institution

The class "Women and the Penal System" class of Spring 2011 completed a powerful set of testimony as their final class project. They solicited reflections on their classroom experiences from former and current inside and outside students. They were not permitted to audio- or video-record the inside students, so they developed a way to represent the inside students' views by having the outside students audio record the inside students' words.

The students performed a simple and moving three-part video, using silhouettes and voices from the inside and the outside. Their videos can be found here at Inside Out Voices on Youtube.

The three videos address the differing expectations and reactions to their Inside-Out classes: one anticipating the class, one during the class, and one reflecting back on their semester together.

I think these stories are incredibly powerful, and that these short videos show great artistry and power. I hope to hear more about this project soon!

2010 Final Class Project by Maddy: Update

Months ago, Maddy from Oregon posted this blog about her literature Inside-Out class: 2010 Final Class Project.

Now here's a really exciting update, with the entire final project available online. There is some really exciting content from the inside and outside members of the class: literary essays, poetry, artwork, and open letters to the class.

I highly recommend that everyone view their final class project here: 2010 Literature and Ethics.

2010 Final Class Project by Maddy

When my professor for my “Literature and Ethics” class through Inside-Out asked for three “outside” student volunteers to compile our class anthology on our own time, my hand shot straight up. No way was I about to let this incredible project for a class that had impacted me so profoundly be completed without my expert opinion. I needed to be a part of this.

A week later the two other outside student volunteers and I met to discuss how we wanted to put together the anthology and the overall message that we wanted this project to represent. All three of us were extremely excited and started listing off ideas we had based on some of the anthologies we’d seen from other classes. As soon as we started looking through the material that our classmates had submitted, we fell silent. The poems, art, letters to the class, response papers, even the crosswords cut out from old newspapers and inspirational quotes copied down by students were so overwhelmingly moving we didn’t know what to say. In that moment I realized what I should have known all along: This project was so not about me. It was about the beautiful, diverse community that had been meeting and learning from each other for the past 10 weeks and I was so lucky that I had been a part of it.

“This is all just so human,” said one of my compiling partners. There was our theme. To represent this, we included a page in the anthology with a photo from our class on which we had every student sign during our last class together. Next to it, we included a page with painted handprints – our reminder to ourselves that while we are all unique individuals, we are also all human and together we had created something wondrous in the form of this anthology and the memories of our class.

In our “Letter From the Editors” – a detail we decided we wanted to include to make sure our classmates understood how honored we were to be able to put this project together – we wrote: “To our classmates, never have we experienced a more dynamic classroom environment. Never have we experienced a more fervent engagement and discussion. Never have we experienced a text come alive through so many sincere, unique, and intimate student contributions. To say ‘I’ve learned’ does not do our class justice. We embarked on a journey that began with uncertainty, nervousness, and excitement and ended with growth, clarity, friendship, and respect. It has been an honor compiling your thoughts, emotions, and experiences of this journey. We have been truly moved by all of your work. The most heartfelt thanks.”

Submitted by Maddy in Oregon