Chantille, Correctional Educator in SIU

Day in the life

Chantille

Correctional Educator

Hi, my name is Chantille and I am a Correctional Educator in the SIU

The education programs available to inmates here are numerous. We have lots of different courses that they can take which will help them earn their high school diploma before they leave, that's the goal.

A lot of the offenders are here on a short-term basis because the SIU is designed to be a very intensive short-term placement.

I have to have lots of different lessons at the ready because my students are at all different levels. So sometimes I'll be teaching, you know, pre-calculus and sometimes I'll be teaching someone how to read.

I find it to be a great privilege just to work with offenders and to learn about where they're coming from and where they've been. You know, as much as I love teaching, I also love learning and I learn from my students every day, and that's what makes my job so special to me and so important.

I really have seen some changes, offenders will come in and a lot of the times, you know, we don't get to necessarily see the end results of our work here. So, I like to think of it as planting seeds. You know, some of them will grow into big, strong trees and some of them might not make it into big strong trees but they’ll still have a chance. So what we're doing is we're planting those seeds to, you know, give everyone a chance.