The new newsletter of the (US-based) Prison Math Project is now published, featuring my second ‘Learn Your Way’ column as a contributing writer-educator. In this column I ‘unpack’ the learning strategies that helped PMP founder and inmate Christopher Havens as he engaged with mathematics while in solitary confinement (AKA ‘the hole’) and subsequently changed his life. The column is based on an interview I had with Christopher last summer.

As a ‘learning detective’ I’ve unpacked strategies for many varied learning adventures and this was certainly one of the most profound I’ve ever encountered. As I express in my column, significant learning doesn’t happen by accident but by purposeful steps, and I hope I help reveal the steps Christopher undertook. Such steps may unfold in-the-moment but that doesn’t diminish the value of revealing them.

The PMP newsletter has a goal of publishing about three times per year and circulates (as permitted and available) to interested subscribers – inmates and administrators – of the US penal system.

I’ve attached the first page of my column; the complete column may be viewed by accessing issue #7 of the PMP newsletter (link here, and scroll down to the Newspaper archives); my column appears on pp 21-23.