A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life shares stories from faculty, students, and APEP Student Assistants. These stories aim to give insight into APEP: how it works, and how it impacts participants.

Professor Kirsten Day (Fall 2022)

I started teaching with APEP in the fall of 2022, when I offered a course entitled “Greek Warrior Myths and Combat Trauma.” In this course, we looked at the ways that Homeric epic and Greek tragedy have been used both to better understand the PTSD experienced by veterans, and to help them process it, while also touching on other ways that Greek myths have been used to grapple with life’s difficulties, including racial trauma, grief from the loss of a child, pandemic anxiety, and more. I was a little apprehensive about how these topics would play out in a prison context, but these students jumped in with both feet: from day one they immersed themselves completely in Homer’s Iliad and were open and enthusiastic participants in discussions about trauma, relating it readily to their own situation with an openness that I found both touching and enlightening. Most of the students expressed interest in more Classics courses, and this term, I am teaching a course on Classical Mythology, but hoping to offer Latin and more in the coming years.

While there are challenges involved with teaching incarcerated students –  figuring out how to function without email or office hours, and finding ways to compensate for lack of technologies like Powerpoint and Smartboards – having students so consistently engaged in the subject matter, so grateful for the opportunity to be in the classroom, and so hungry for more learning opportunities has been invigorating. While I hope that my class is enriching for the APEP students who are taking it, I know that it has been incredibly inspiring for me, prompting me to reassess my pedagogy in unexpected ways that will make me a better teacher, and offering new perspectives that will make me a more understanding and more empathetic person. As another APEP instructor put it, this opportunity has truly been a gift, and I hope to continue to participate for years to come.