Beyond the Bars
05-13-24
For more than four decades, McCormick professor Ken Sawyer has been teaching students, preparing them for roles in different walks of ministerial life. But it’s his most recent work with incarcerated students that has been leaving deep impressions on his own life. “My students are hardworking, transformed by the burden of time and the presence of grace,” Sawyer shares about the students in his carceral classrooms. It’s this ability to see beyond the bars and into the lives of the individual that has been depositing a new form of gratitude and thankfulness in the heart of this seasoned professor.
Sawyer started his carceral teaching at Cook County Jail, before moving to work on the prison side. “These are different worlds. The challenge for those who work in jails is working with younger people who have very volatile lives outside of the jail system,” he details. “The men and women I work with (now) are older, settled, chastened, transformed, stunning and brilliant… and invisible. Erased.” Jails, he explains, are about detainees, individuals waiting in custody, with changing situations. Prisons, where he teaches history and writing courses aimed at bettering individuals' lives during and after incarceration, are where those who have been convicted of a crime are spending much longer sentences. These students, with varying faith tradition backgrounds including Muslim and Christian, are enduring the terrible price of long-term incarceration, some continuing to protest their innocence. It is a setting where Sawyer wanted to do more than just stop in to give a motivating lecture.
“The biggest challenge with teaching in prisons is the setting, the regime of punishment and control that is the carceral state,” he explains. Given this backdrop, Sawyer finds a unique motivation to know his students more personally while pressing his role as more than just an educator contributing to their knowledge. The RAND Corporation found individuals who participate in education programs have 43% lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not. For Sawyer, the statistics are a one-sided sliver of the story. “The opportunity is the blessing of getting to know these students and their stories and the graced community they have developed,” he shares passionately.
Though it comes with a wide range of challenges, like students having to write out all their work long-hand in manuscript format due to word processors not being allowed, Sawyer sees through to the successes. “My experience has been engaging with people who are very hard-working participants, who are, like the rest of us, pursuing God’s grace and redemption,” he relates. When pressed for a story of success from the last few years, Sawyer flips the script. “I resist telling you about the one stand-out student. That’s a trope. That’s what people are expecting to hear,” he says. “I will tell you instead about the many students who minister to one another and to me, always asking about my family, keeping me in prayer; remembering the small details of our conversations, and asking about those things; part of our larger coursework and lifework.”
Sawyer has participated in carceral education at a variety of institutions. Programs through North Park University at Statesville Correctional Center and Logan Correctional Center, and through Lewis University at Sheridan Correctional Center, enable him to study with a wide range of imprisoned students. Theological, biblical, and interdisciplinary resources help students construct a worldview and develop personal growth goals. The students, participating in a substantial degree program, can confront the challenges of incarceration and the impact on potential reentry into society with a new theological base. The classroom also nurtures a healthy community through relationships that extend into life in prison and beyond. “I’m just so very grateful for the daring vision of the schools that established these programs,” he explains with gratitude. “McCormick made it possible for me to come alongside North Park and now Lewis University to teach in these demanding and rewarding spaces.”
As Sawyer works to be of service to his students, it seems clear that more often than not, they’re the ones being of service to him. “I really consider this the culmination of my teaching career. I get to use all that I have learned and experienced and prepared in McCormick’s classrooms over the years,” he shares. “I was formed and trained in McCormick’s classrooms. Now I have a somewhat larger classroom where I continue to teach students who are well motivated and well prepared.”
Eddie Brown and Ken Sawyer. Photo Courtesy Karl Soderstrom, North Park University
Photo Courtesy Karl Soderstrom, North Park University