Classroom Commentary: Inside Out

Classroom Commentary: Inside Out

By The Honors Editors

The Honors Program recently made headlines when Chicago’s Fox32 station featured Honors professor Mindy Kalchman and her Inside Out class. The Inside Out program seeks to bridge educational divides by enrolling traditional college students and incarcerated students in the same class. This past Autumn, Dr. Mindy Kalchman brought the Inside Out experience to students at DePaul and the Cook County County Jail.

The Fox report said about Inside Out: “The program seems to be breaking down stereotypes and fostering a sense of unity, challenging the notion of one side being ’right’ and the other “wrong.” Instead, the focus is on everyone coming together to solve problems and search for answers.”

Student Reflections on the Inside Out Experience

“The experience of learning alongside incarcerated students -discovering shared similarities, firsthand encounters with the dehumanization of the carceral system, and recognizing that everyone deserves access to education and the chance for self-improvement – are lessons that will remain with me indefinitely, extending well beyond my time here at DePaul. From exploring origami to navigating complex word problems, this class has not only taught me about myself and my approach to learning but also highlighted the advantages of collaborative learning environments.”

Mayha Syed, DePaul Honors Student

“This course made higher education accessible, and not just higher education, this course was a senior-level honors capstone course.

College is accessible when it’s about thinking and having everyone’s identity, perspective, strengths and needs welcomed, appreciated, and applied for everyone’s benefit.”

Anonymous student from the Cook County Department of Corrections

Dr. Mindy Kalchman’s Reflection on the Inside Out Experience

“In all of the courses I teach, I try to challenge the notion that being smart is associated with succeeding in school and getting A’s. That may be the case for some, but succeeding in school is often about doing what teachers ask and doing our best to think like teachers so that we get things right when called on in class and on tests and quizzes. Moreover, much of school success is based on surface level learning that depends on having a good memory. Missing from that association are alternatives to what it means to be smart. I have been a math educator of some sort or another for over 30 years. I have seen elementary school kids, middle school kids, high school kids, college undergraduates, graduate students, and teachers all judge themselves as not smart because they couldn’t do math in school. Math is often a gatekeeper for self-perception and a subject that marginalizes students early on when they don’t comply, have poor memories, see the world in ways teachers and classmates don’t, etc. And if I was finding that those who have had many advantages in life are feeling like doing math is pointless and a surefire way to feel dumb, what about those who had no advantages? How are they being positioned to succeed if school is the determinant of who’s smart and not smart?

I know from my career that when we let people interpret and solve problems collaboratively and in ways that make sense to them, a whole lot more people are suddenly smart and worthy of recognition and reverence for their thinking.

By teaching a math problem-solving course as an Inside Out experience, I wanted all students to find their voices, confidence, and expertise through agency in learning. Admittedly, the success of the course exceeded my expectations given it was the first time the course ran. One of the outside students said something so inspiring on our last day. She said that the outside students came to rely on the inside students for approaches to solve some of the more challenging problems. This was because outside students found themselves trying to remember formulas and procedures to fit the problem, rather than having the problems fit their thinking. It was magical. Once the inside students opened up and started sharing how they were seeing problems and solution strategies, the outside students got wide-eyed and impressed by the logic and sensibility when not stuck on trying to remember a formula or procedure.”