SQNews: Besides being Vice Principal at Burton, what other positions have you held? 

J.W: Professor at online and on-ground higher Ed schools, (AA/AS, BA/BS, MA/MS courses), curriculum coordinator in District Office, elementary school principal, high school VP, teacher, investment banking, U.S. Navy.

SQNews: What were your expectations about prison before you started inside? Were you nervous?

J.W.: I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t nervous due to the environment; I was a little nervous to be in a new job.

SQNews: Have your perceptions toward incarcerated students changed since you have been working at SQ?

J.W.: Yes, SQ students are the most motivated, knowledge-hungry, appreciative, and grateful students as a group that I’ve ever worked with. I had no idea this would be the case.

SQNews: What do you think is missing to make education more exciting and useful for incarcerated students?

J.W.: One thing that would make education more exciting, authentic, and accessible would be the ability to learn through projects. In the incarcerated setting, students are limited by the types of projects they can complete due to various restrictions. Those limitations are something we work around. Anything our teachers can create that leans toward multiple intelligences and provides multiple access points to the content is helpful to our students’ learning.

SQNews: As the Vice Principal, what expectations do you have from your students and coworkers?

J.W.:  It’s important to frame our work together as healthy, holistic, and humanistic. From that foundation, if we all work hard, support each other, extend grace to others as needed, we’ll all succeed academically and professionally. 

SQNews: Have you ever faced any unexpected hurdles with your adult students?

J.W.: No, but I’ve experienced unexpected hurdles within the system. Within CDCR, the constraints are many and with good reason. So, the challenge is to find a way to overcome obstacles within the confines of our system. It’s kind of like a riddle that must be solved.

SQNews: In your opinion, do you think that the California Model has become a distraction or a benefit toward advancing social justice?

J.W.: I don’t know that the California Model has been in place long enough to make that assessment. If our implementation goes as planned, the model will certainly advance social justice for everyone including residents, custody, staff. From my perspective, it appears that the California model is being taken seriously and so has every chance for success.

SQNews:  For how long have you been working as an educator? When did you start working for CDCR and/or at SQ?

J.W.: About 25 yrs [as an educator]. Started working for CDCR in August 2019. 

SQNews: Why it is important for you to work as an educator behind prison walls?

J.W.: I love learning. There’s a lot to learn here from many different perspectives, and I appreciate that. SQRC is a microcosm of life outside prison; it’s just that the room for error is much smaller here.

SQNews: What have been the biggest challenges you have faced in order to make sure that the students benefits from their education?

J.W.: Instructional time lost due to forces beyond our control. Students can learn everything they need to on their own, but in a classroom with a great teacher and supportive peers, they can learn the basics and so much more about life, relations, connections, and how to apply what they learn in school to real life.

SQNews: How does your Education department deal with the monolingual Spanish-speaking community and other minorities in terms of making sure that they, too, get the same opportunities that English speakers have?

J.W.: We follow the department’s guidelines for all those with limited-English proficiency, and that is to immerse students in the English language. We can now access translation apps through the tablets and often other students/staff are multilingual and can help with assignments or translations. 

Our goal in education is providing access to the content through multiple avenues, such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, artistic, music, etc. For our deaf students, we provide both certified ASL interpreters in-person and via remote services and for less official interactions, ADA peer support has been immensely helpful.

SQNews: What advice will you give to other educators throughout CDCR who don’t have the same resource or approach toward teaching these minorities?

J.W.: All credentialed educators and education administrators are trained in how to educate minority groups. Best practices include collaborating with each other across schools and to share what works at different sites. We often work across school sites to enhance our efforts at our own site. I have many professional networks across the state, and especially in the northern region.

SQNews:  Can you tell as what has been the happiest or proud moment in your career?

J.W.: Student successes are my happiest moments, and those often take a while to become known … In prison, some of my happiest moments as a VP have been when I feel like I’m just doing my job in responding to an inquiry or a request, and sometimes students become overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude when I hear and see them, whether or not I’m able to honor their request. I do my best by doing right by our students, and it gets noticed. 

SQNews: What have been the saddest moments of your career?

J.W.: I think the saddest moments in education are when miscommunication or misunderstandings occur between people working together because this can lead to missed opportunities.

SQNews: What do you think of social justice?

J.W.: I think social justice is necessary and am looking forward to the social justice reforms that are in progress, currently.