25 Helping Students with the Hidden Curriculum
Many of our students might be the first in their family or even community to have access to postsecondary education. Additionally, a good number of our students dropped out of school and finished their GED/HSED in prison. Please be mindful when language and activities in your classroom might involve the “hidden curriculum” or exclusive vocabularies. Examples of hidden curriculum range from small to large concerns, such as the following:
- What is a syllabus?
- How should I label my assignment?
- What is a flash drive? How do I use it?
- We can write in our books? What would I write or underline in a text?
- What is the assignment asking me to do? What are keywords to look for?
- How do I write an outline?
- How do I participate in class discussions?
- How do I know if something isn’t a complete sentence?
- How should I respond to an instructor’s comments on my paper?
- How do I read literature for research purposes?
- What does it mean to be an alumni of this class?
We strongly encourage you to not take anything for granted in the prison classroom. Providing ample explanations, particularly at the beginning of the course, will help students understand that no question is off-limits and that you are here to provide a bridge to college for them. For example, some instructors walk the students through putting their name on their text and encouraging them to write in them. One might even show students what kinds of things they have underlined or commented on. On the first day, particularly if your syllabus is long, you might help guide students through key points and explain how they might continue to use the syllabus throughout the semester.
We also encourage instructors to see themselves as facilitators in the classroom, rather than experts. As a facilitator, it is expected that you wouldn’t know the answer to every question that a student has. It is often refreshing for students to hear “I’m not sure about that…I’ll have to look it up/ask someone.” Additionally, it helps reinforce for students that much of education isn’t about knowing “all of the things.” Instead, it’s about asking questions–often the questions that people are too afraid to ask.