Anyone work in prison/YOI education?

[Ayoop]

Got an interview for a teaching job in a YOI.

Have previously taught a bit in FE and have youth work quals and lots of professional experience in my subject specialism. I have worked with young offenders before and absolutely loved it, but haven't had a job interview for yonks and am very nervous.

I have to prepare a lesson plan and talk them through it, followed by interview. Eeek.

Any words of wisdom or encouragement?

I've worked in FE for a long time and some years ago I worked in a YOI for about 18 months.

If you have worked with young offenders before and you enjoyed it, I would say you are off to a very good start as you know what to expect. Make sure you get that over at the interview.

From what I remember, you very rarely have exactly the same YOs in your class from one week to the next as they were often called away to see lawyers, social workers, go to court, etc. Therefore every lesson had to be complete in itself.

The lads I worked with often seemed to have a short attention span, so a lesson with a lot of variety often went down well.

Other common conditions amongst young offenders - dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression (caused by being inside), paranoia (caused by drug use and also by being inside).

I really enjoyed my time in the YOI, though - I met some real characters and the humour/banter was brilliant.

Good luck with your interview.

I did for about 3 years, left about 2.5 years or so ago now.

I worked in prison at at a male prison. It was half adult/half YO so over 17y males) and cat C up - so everything from drugs and burglaries to high risk lifers and restricted prisoners.

Make sure you are up to date on security type stuff and be prepared to answer quetsiions on how you would deal with prisoners wanting to find out information about you, or "grooming."

As for the lesson - so long as it is covers what a normal lesson would be I don't think it needs to be any different than for any other education setting.

Good luck/