1 Odyssey Beyond Bars Overview
Odyssey Beyond Bars (OBB), housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a college jumpstart program that has seen rapid growth and interest in Wisconsin state prisons. Odyssey Beyond Bars began teaching noncredit courses in the prisons in 2015 and credit-bearing courses at Oakhill Correctional Institution in 2019. In Spring 2022, we expanded to offer credit-bearing courses in three additional prisons (Green Bay, Racine, and Columbia). We are part of the UW-Madison Odyssey Project, which for two decades has offered free humanities courses to adult learners living in poverty. Odyssey courses are aimed at disrupting cycles of generational poverty and building students’ sense of voice, confidence, and community through reading, writing, and speaking.
Our primary goals are to build communication skills and encourage students to take more college courses. Our most commonly offered course is English 100–Writing in the World, a first-year composition course. The course exposes students to a wide variety of writers and focuses on personal, reflective writing to build students’ confidence and voice. Additionally, the course emphasizes thoughtful discussion and peer review, which helps students build empathy and interpersonal skills and reinforces a sense of community in the classroom. Credits earned in the course are easily transferable and satisfy communication requirements in degree and certificate programs statewide.
To amplify student voices and help build a learning community in the classroom, we collect student writing throughout the semester and publish it periodically in a publication we call the Odyssey Beyond Bars Oracle. Students read from Oracles in class and share perspectives on other students’ writing, so the Oracle itself is a confidence and community-building tool.
“I am truly grateful to have been able to take part in this class. Thank you to the teacher and tutors for thinking enough of me to take time away from your lives to help me grow. It may seem silly, but this class really came through for me at a time in my life when I was beating myself up with remorse. Thank you for including me and showing me love. I really needed it and felt it throughout the class.” —Robert, class of Fall 2019
We currently require students in all our courses to take part in weekly small group or tutoring sessions. Full classes meet only once a week, and we find that these additional small-group meetings are essential to support student success and retention.
Other facets of our wrap-around support for English 100 specifically include: advising from UW-Madison academic and financial aid advisors, instruction on research methods provided by UW-Madison librarians, and storytelling coaching provided by The Moth storytellers.
As we carefully grow our credit class offerings, we are also piloting noncredit enrichment courses at some prisons in order to keep students engaged and recruit new students into credit-bearing courses. Enrichment courses have flexible participation requirements and are generally open to students who have not yet earned a high school credential. They also cultivate a greater awareness of our programming in the prisons generally and provide on-ramps to higher education for students who might not feel prepared to take courses for credit. Many noncredit students go on to take for-credit courses.
OBB students in our credit-bearing courses are considered special students at UW-Madison, registered through the Department of Continuing Studies.
Many program alumni use their Odyssey Beyond Bars experience as a first step toward a college degree and as a foundation for success when they leave prison and return to their communities. https://odyssey.wisc.edu/beyondbars/