Comm in Ten: The Classroom Most People Never See

Amy Ellefson teaches in a classroom most people never see. Inside the Omaha Correctional Center, she works with students enrolled in UNO TRAC. That stands for Transforming, Renewing, Achieving, and Connecting. It's a grant-funded program out of UNO's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice that brings college courses to incarcerated students, with a path to continue their education at UNO once they're released. Amy is a lecturer in the School of Communication with a Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi. Teaching at OCC means no laptops, no staples, no jewelry, no electronics. No index cards either, until the prison's tech offered to make them out of cardstock for her. Amy walks us through the process, then tells the story of Terry, an OCC student whose MAV Talks speech about Nebraska's "life-means-life" law she recorded because he couldn't be there to give it himself. Terry is incarcerated for life. The audience didn't know where the recording came from until it was over.  Amy keeps coming back to a line of her own: "I feel like sometimes I get more than they do." Watch on YouTube, listen on your favorite podcast app, and subscribe to Comm in Ten.