How I Spent My Summer Bringing Science Inside Prison Walls

Inga Capps, (Princeton Intern in Civic Service (PICS)), worked with the Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice on our STEM Unbarred program in Washington D.C. She is an undergraduate student studying Chemistry. She has a strong passion for aiding and ensuring equal access and opportunities for education, as well as serving and advocating for marginalized and overlooked populations. Inga hopes to help PGP by supporting incarcerated and previously incarcerated individuals, one of the many steps towards building a more just society.

We’re rolling the metal cart through the electric sliding doors. 50 surveys, 15 pencils, 12 lego antibodies, 2 blood typing kits. All of the supplies are counted. I’m with a group of volunteers. We’re going into our first unit at a juvenile detention center, giving the students a science demonstration. I remember the demonstration the team had last month. The students' shocked faces when watching the volunteers do “magic” card tricks, then quickly learning the math behind the tricks to go and amaze their peers. They haven’t seen this immunology demonstration yet, I hope they like it as much as the last! 

For the past two months, I have been working with the Petey Greene Program’s STEM Unbarred (SU) team in Washington D.C. The SU team, which has been continuously breaking barriers since its establishment in 2021, provides monthly science demonstrations to students inside of a juvenile detention center. These presentations, like most of PGP’s other tutoring programs, supplement a pre-established science curriculum provided by the correctional facility’s school. However, STEM Unbarred uniquely stands out in its mission: the SU team has a singular focus on science, which is a regularly overlooked and neglected field in the already limited carceral education system. As a result of this, incarcerated students often have poorer educational outcomes when it comes to STEM courses. The SU team believes that science is learnt best through hands-on experiments and that system-impacted youth should have those opportunities to explore their interests as any other student. SU volunteers spend their time proposing and coming up with unique twists on traditional classroom labs, formulating an adventurous teaching methodology that encompasses a range of science disciplines. Bringing high quality interactive science programming is not without its challenges though, and this is due to the unique aspects of teaching in correctional facilities.    

One of the most obvious challenges to providing education inside of a prison are the numerous security protocols. Any educational materials from lesson plans, readings, and supplies that are brought into facilities must always be cleared for both content and to ensure that it poses no risk to the safety and wellbeing of everyone at the facility. This includes things that may seem obvious and others that are not: no pencils with erasers, no hard or breakable items, and nothing with a sharp edge, let alone chemicals for experiments, scalpels for dissections, or wires for circuits. Additionally, correctional facilities have limited wifi, computers, and general technology access. And to finally make things harder, there is a lack of funding and support for STEM education in the carceral system. SU currently has one location, but hopes to expand to other facilities both locally and nationally within the PGP. My role this summer has mainly focused on helping them standardize the SU model and curriculum in preparation for this expansion. 

Ingenuity and creativity are required elements for success in teaching inside, and part of SU’s strategy lies in its unique approach to navigating these obstacles that would otherwise prevent students from accessing a proper lab inclusive STEM education. For example, how can students understand an anatomy and physiology lesson without the ability to do a typical dissection? They can create a model heart using plastic water bottles! The SU team has cleverly formulated a lesson plan in which students can assemble the chambers of a heart using plastic water bottles and push blood (water dyed red with food coloring) through arteries (plastic straws). Now, how does the SU team go about teaching computer science without computers? They teach a lesson on the specificity of commands! Wiffle, a waffle making robot (a volunteer in a costume), can only make waffles for his students if they write down and provide him the correctly formatted instructions. All of STEM Unbarred’s demonstrations have been able to satisfy the restrictive nature of the carceral system while still giving students a rigorous educational experience. Students deserve diversity within their education, and SU volunteers tirelessly work and innovate to ensure those students have as rich of an educational experience as they would on the outside. 

Besides having such a diverse curriculum, another key ingredient in STEM Unbarred’s success is the program's diversity of volunteers. Utilizing volunteers with a variety of not only gender or racial backgrounds, but STEM knowledge, is fundamental to the growth of the program. Participating in multiple demos with the SU team, I have been able to see how having volunteers with a large range of knowledge in STEM can enrich students' learning environments and experiences. Teachers that can bring in varied perspectives from their respective disciplines are able to open up inspiration for students to pursue different fields, further students exposure and engagement, and introduce them to a variety of problem solving skills. The first SU demo I participated in was called “Mathemagic”. This demo, centered around math, gave students the opportunity to observe and then learn different card tricks. The underlying theme of this demo was that all of these tricks weren’t actually “magic,” but rather worked because of the math behind them. Volunteers with a special interest in math who could share their experiences of using arithmetic in a variety of contexts outside of typical worksheets or tests, kept students engaged and intrigued. In every demonstration I have done with SU it has been clear that student engagement is correlated with the volunteer’s passion. When volunteers love a subject, they love to teach it, and they are able to inspire students by showing them that STEM can encompass a multitude of applications. 

Working with STEM Unbarred has only opened my eyes further to the greater need for educational justice across the country. This summer, I have been able to witness firsthand how education in the carceral system is necessary and transformative for all parties involved, and being able to help STEM Unbarred expand their curriculum and outreach has been nothing short of an amazing experience. Moving forward, it is also clear to me that many conversations still need to be had. Fellow STEM lovers, including myself, need to increase advocacy for the marginalized communities that don’t get to experience the fields that they love. The students that I worked with still have their own personal, professional, and educational lives ahead of them, and it is my biggest hope that being able to participate in STEM Unbarred’s demonstrations has helped them to discover the world of science.