Think Outside the Gate

By Melisa Mel and Kendall Pardo

Think Outside the Gate is a book dedicated to all those who work or live in any type of incarceration environment. It contains a compilation of lesson plans and presentation outlines which can be used as an example of how one can turn any type of lesson into a think outside the gate experience.

The think outside the gate mind-set is a philosophy that Melisa Mel created as the focal point of her lessons and presentations. This approach makes it a priority to keep the students focus on everything and anything outside of their limited, incarcerating walls. This not only instills hope in them, but it also better prepares them for when they cross the prison gates to go live back in society.

Melisa Mel feels that better preparing for reentry into society is the most efficient way to ensure a persons success outside of prison so that they do not return to prison. Her hope is that while working or living behind bars, a think outside the gate mind-set is present at all times, as that will tackle recidivism at its very core.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543451610

Melisa Mel

Melisa Mel was the Founder, CEO, and President of her company From Victim to Survivor, LLC. Upon its retirement after three extremely successful years, she then went on to become the Founder of Mels Voice on Paper. This is the platform from which she promotes her publications. She works extensively with First Responders, Perpetrators, and Victims of sexual assault as well as victims of other violent crimes. Her preference is to be addressed simply as Mel. Mel taught English, Spanish, Severe Disabilities, and Prison populations for over thirty years. She then transitioned her focus to LGBT issues, policing issues, first responder issues and vulnerable populations. She has published many books and is currently working on her next project. She holds a BA in English, an MA in English as a Second Language, an MA in Special Education/Education, and a PhD ABD in Psychology. As a successful business person and one who has worked extensively with people in unhealthy relationships, Mel knows well that the simple lesson found in the pages of The Fabric Store is a lesson that is vital for growth. Sometimes time, money, and heart are just not enough. There are many factors that can come into play that can affect ones success. Good recordkeeping and constant reassessment of how one is doing are both critical for one to be able to make wise decisions. Mel has had to make some extremely tough and painful decisions in her own business life and in her personal life. Bold decision-making and strong follow-through have made Mel the success that she is today. Over the years, Mel has been nominated for various national awards for her work with victims, her philanthropy, her teaching, and her writing. She was recently awarded the 2017 Arizona Beth McDonald Woman of the Year Award and the Triumph Over Tragedy Award from Arizona Governor Doug Ducey.

Book preview

Enriching the Visualizations

Pre-lesson Observations:

Starting out classes with a new set of inmates, I needed a neutral, safe ground from which to start my lessons. Something academic enough to be applicable to everyone. Something interesting enough to hold everyone’s attention. Something basic enough that the lesson could be kept complex or simple. Something that everyone used. After much thought, adjectives were my choice! Adjectives enrich writing, speech, and personal expressiveness. They describe a person, a place, or a thing. Essentially, adjectives give life to language. I chose to start my lessons from this platform.

This lesson plan was created based upon the needs I observed in the classroom from students who were writing and speaking but not enriching their written and verbal narratives with the use of adjectives. With the students’ time behind the gates, their view of the world had gotten smaller and smaller. Their capability to describe the world had shrunk along with their view.

This lesson plan aimed to open up the students’ descriptive abilities and encourage their THINK OUTSIDE THE GATE mindset.

Post-lesson Observations:

There were various interesting things that I observed throughout this lesson.

The very first activity, the visualization activity, was very telling. The students had a very hard time closing their eyes for this. Only a few were comfortably able to do so. A few others made very good attempts to do so but their eyes kept popping open. The majority did not even attempt to close their eyes. They simply gazed facing downward with their eyes wide open as they did the activity but kept their peripheral vision on alert.

In the first visualization, I asked them to visualize a car. I gave no details with regard to this car. After they had visualized a car, I asked them to then visualize a black and red, expensive, sleek, speedy, race car. They all agreed that the second visualization was easier to do and richer in content because I had given them details.

Next, I asked them to visualize a house. I gave no details regarding the house. I then asked them to visualize a two-story, big, forest green house, with burgundy trimming, a burgundy door, shutters in the window, a smokestack on the roof with smoke coming out, surrounded by a lush lawn, and a large weeping willow in the front yard. Again, they all agreed that the second visualization had been much richer.

Once they seemed to understand the point of the visualization activity, I moved them along to the second activity; that of brainstorming adjectives on the board. I began by defining brainstorming. Because I use brainstorming often in my classroom, it was important that they understand how to brainstorm.

During the brainstorming session, there were a few students that were very vocal and shared out. However, the majority remained quiet. It was as if they did not care, they did not know, or they simply did not want to take part in a group activity. The variety and quality of the adjectives provided was very poor. Once the students realized that colors were adjectives, the board quickly filled up with what seemed to be a Crayola reunion of every crayon color imaginable. The board full of adjectives stayed up as a reference point for the next activity.

The third activity, that of the essay writing, was complicated. With the exception of one or two of the students, none of them knew how to write an essay. For some of them, writing an essay, looked more like a list of random items. Since I had asked that they use adjectives, these essays were filled with the random items but each item had a random color assigned to it. That was the content of their essay.

With every single activity I do, I like to give the students feedback of what I observed from them. I feel that without constructive feedback, there is no growth. My style of giving feedback is to first give a compliment, and then an observation as to how something could have been improved.

While my students were mostly adults ranging in ages from 18 to 74, they seemed to feel insecure and were still walking on eggshells around me. To be successful, they needed to know themselves well, their triggers well, their strengths well, their weaknesses well, and pretty much everything about themselves well. This was critical for the purpose of strengthening their THINK OUTSIDE THE GATE mindset. I had not yet introduced the mindset of THINK OUTSIDE THE GATE to the students but I was building up to it. By the time I directly introduced the concept, they would already know what I meant by asking them to THINK OUTSIDE THE GATE.

I started out the feedback on this lesson by complimenting the students for going along with the visualization activity. I told them that I realized that it had been a difficult activity for some of them. I shared with the students what I had observed regarding their comfort level in closing their eyes for the first activity. They patiently heard me out. They just looked at me as I spoke. They reminded me of when my four children were younger and I was lecturing them about something. Quiet, big eyes just looked back at me waiting to hear what the punishment would be.

I carried on and thanked them for having filled the board with adjectives. I then shared my observations of their struggle to find vocabulary and their hesitancy to share with the rest of the class. Again, they patiently heard me out. Again, they just looked back at me. Again, I was reminded of my children at a younger