For many years, Hudson River Center played a key role in New York State's incarcerated education program. The project originated in 1990 to support the ongoing staff development and monitoring activities required of all New York State incarcerated education programs funded under Section 326 of the Adult Education Act. This support includes:
Instructional Design
Hudson River Center developed, produced, and distributed the From Incarceration to Productive Lifestyle series of instructional manuals. These documents, as described below, share the collective experience and wisdom of education professionals who have successfully guided and reintegrated hundreds of incarcerated youth and adults back to the community.
An Education and Corrections Collaborative Model: a Civilian Orientation Manualwas produced to help correctional facilities, school districts, BOCES, and community-based organizations work in cooperation with each other. As detailed in the manual, civilian service providers and correctional facilities must understand each other's goals, objectives, and messages in order to work together. Sample policies and procedures as well as various inmate and facility documents are included.
Breaking Barriers/Rompiendo Barreras is a tool for Spanish-speaking persons who are incarcerated. Put together by students of an ESL class offered by the Syracuse City School District and the Onondaga County Sheriff's Department, the phrase book contains phrases commonly used in facilities of incarceration and the Spanish translation of those phrases.
Bringing Family Literacy to Incarcerated Settings: An Instructional Guide describes family literacy projects within an incarcerated setting. The guide includes a description of various program designs as well as a blueprint for implementation. Resources and sample forms are provided.
Making the Transition: An Instructional Guide for Incarcerated Youth Education provides information about incarcerated youth, the education program, legal rights, inmate needs, and program staff needs. A series of sample lessons, many of which have been provided by corrections educators, is also included within the instructional guide.
Transition Programs: Bridging the Gap discusses what occurs in a transition program, identifying certain components as absolutely vital. Citing exactly what makes a transition coordinator effective, accomplishing activities is also explored.
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Workshops
Firm in its belief that resources are most effectively disseminated when accompanied by training, Hudson River Center unveils its publications in conjunction with staff development sessions. Over the course of its work in corrections education, Hudson River Center has trained thousands of administrators, counselors, coordinators, and educators of incarcerated education programs and corrections programs.
Hudson River Center consistently receives extremely positive evaluations for its training efforts. Participants as well as clients are impressed, as revealed by repeat requests from clients for Hudson River Center to coordinate such events.
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Project Management/Coordination
Hudson River Center supported the development, implementation, and evaluation of a performance measurement system to study outcomes of transition participants. The results of this evaluation demonstrated the long-term effectiveness of the New York State Transition Program. Furthermore, Hudson River Center's past work included identification of best practices and development of a resource guide about those best practices.
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Peer Assistance Networks
To further promote incarcerated education, Hudson River Center fostered the services of the Technical Assistance Team. This team of experienced educators and corrections officers from local programs is a problem solving and information gathering vehicle for the incarcerated youth community. Bringing together this team of local experts available for consultation is an example of Hudson River Center's resourcefulness in providing technical assistance most efficiently.