Community Corner

Through 'Turning Pages,' Fathers in Prison Read with Their Children

A Catonsville-based program works with dads at the Baltimore County Detention Center in Towson.

For the past eight weeks, several inmates at the Baltimore County Detention Center in Towson have been carrying around their favorite books, with titles like Green Eggs and Ham and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

The inmates devour the books, sometimes over and over, though they'll gladly part with the best-loved ones.

They've been reading the books to their children and will make gifts of the books at the end of the program, the nonprofit Turning Pages Family Reading Club, which promotes family reading in correctional facilities.

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Catonsville resident Flo Kennedy-Stack, who comes every Wednesday to the detention center with a group of volunteers, started the program.

During the sessions, volunteers share books with the fathers and also talk about reading with their children. Then, twice a month, the families get to visit and the fathers read aloud to their eager offspring.

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For the inmates, the chance to see their children face-to-face has been life-changing.

“My little girl doesn’t have to look at me through glass,” said Troy, one of the fathers in the program, who asked that his last name not be used.

“It’s such a good thing to keep the bond going while you’re in here.”

For the men, Wednesdays, the day of the program, became the new beginning and end of their week.

“When she comes here, she’s so much better for that whole time [before and after the visit],” said Jayson, another father in the program who didn't want to use his last name.

“Every time I talk to her on the phone she says, ‘Daddy, you’re going to read a book to me.’”

At the beginning of each session, the men offer support to each other in their parenting efforts.

“We’re here for our kids,” said Jayson. “You’re not going to put a price on this.”

The program is a result of a lesson Kennedy-Stack learned while teaching at Arbutus Middle School in 2000. She recalled a particular student who had been struggling in class. The child suddenly changed his attitude when the class started reading Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

It wasn’t until later, in a conversation with the student’s mother, that Kennedy-Stack found the reason for the attitude shift: The boy’s father was in jail in Hagerstown and the two had been reading the book together over the phone.

“The mother told me, ‘They finally have something to talk about together,’” Kennedy-Stack said.

The program, modeled after one in New York, was piloted in 2009 at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup, where it ran until Kennedy-Stack was able to move it to Baltimore County in the spring of 2010.  So far, Turning Pages has served 26 families and 55 children.

Eventually, Kennedy-Stack said, she would like to see concurrent programs to allow more inmates to participate. She is currently applying for grants but also needs donations of books and supplies for crafts the fathers also do with the children.

Twice a month, the organization has what is called "The Father’s Workshop," wherein volunteers talk with the fathers about the previous week and the visits with their children. They introduce the fathers to a genre of children’s books and talk about how to read the books with their children.

Over the program's eight weeks, the dads will cover four genres: stories, story books or classics, nonfiction and issue-related titles devoted to everything from potty training to behavior.

Then, when the families come to visit, the inmates read books they have picked out and work with their children on an activity.

For the families, reading has become a more central part of their daily routine. The books the fathers give to the children are now toted around the house and read multiple times a day, the families say.

The kids look forward to Wednesdays as much as the fathers.

On the way to the program this week, one daughter was so excited she refused to eat dinner. She told her mother, "Daddy first and dinner later," the mom said.

When the program first started, the relationship with the staff was tense, said Kennedy-Stack, and it took time for everyone to trust each other.

"They see each other as more human," she said. 

For the next session, which starts in May, Kennedy-Stack has 10 men, 10 spouses and a total of 16 kids, doubling the size of the program, which is growing as word spreads.

Wednesday was the last week of the current program, meaning the participants will have personal contact visits with their families for the last time. Some of them will leave the detention center soon, while others will continue with their sentences.

Kennedy-Stack presented all of the families with certificates and talked with them about how much she had seen them grow in their love of reading to their children.

“[Reading is] so simple and so loving and the ripples of that simple loving act go out,” she said.

Volunteer Betty Freeland said she has watched fathers use the time with their children to talk about more serious issues, in between reading books together.

“It helps you discuss issues when there is a story to read on the page,” she said. “The dads are so good at this, once you teach them how to do it.”

Kennedy-Stack keeps letters that former participants have written to her at the end of the program.

One inmate named Gordon said he never would have read to his children if it hadn't been for the program.

“I never associated books with fun,” he wrote. “I also did not realize that my children would enjoy reading with me so much.”

Another inmate named John wrote that his love for his own books had often kept him from really appreciating the value of children’s books.

“I was rather vain about my book-reading abilities, in all candor, so I’ve been humbled—and delighted—to learn so much about how to read to children, including much that was new (for example, the importance of asking questions of her as we read, to engage her in the story),” he wrote.

The program is having a  at the Metro Gallery in Baltimore on April 30. It is also affiliated with Fusion Partnerships, which helps support start-up nonprofits in the Baltimore area. The group also has a Facebook page and a website.


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